ConAgra closing Ranch Style Beans plant

ConAgra Foods Inc. is closing the company’s Fort Worth plant on El Paso St., and laying off all of the plant’s 121 workers. The 200,000-square-foot building is known to locals as the Ranch Style Beans plant. The property is valued at about $15 million according to the Tarrant Appraisal District.

The plant is expected to close in late February 2010, said Dave Jackson, a ConAgra Foods spokesman.

“The reason the plant is closing is that to maintain it we would need to make a pretty significant investment, around $10 million worth, to modernize it,” he said. “We have our plants elsewhere that have excess capacity, and we can transfer the production of products made in Fort Worth to those facilities.”

The facilities with excess capacity are located in Newport, Tenn., and Archbold, Ohio, Jackson said. After closing the plant, ConAgra Foods plans to sell the facility and its assets.

 lwimmer@bizpress.net