Ocean Spray Dumps Bordentown for PA
Posted on 15 May 2011
Today’s Trentonian reports on the big business news in central Jersey today.
Ocean Spray said it’s closing its 60-acre juice-manufacturing plant in September 2013 because operating a newly built facility in the Keystone State is cheaper than upgrading the Bordentown facility.
The juice plant has been a staple of the community and a major source of revenue for Bordentown since it was established in 1943. The imminent closure means the factory’s 250 employees will have to decide whether to move with the company or find new jobs.
That is a story that has been repeated so often I would qualify it as sad. And the reaction of our local politicians is noteworthy.
City, county and state officials offered a number of incentives to keep Ocean Spray in the Garden State, but New Jersey Assemblyman Joe Malone, who lives in Bordentown, said the Massachusetts-based company didn’t negotiate in good faith.
Malone said he and the local officials for the last six months bent over backward to accommodate Ocean Spray in ways that would satisfy the company in remaining in Bordentown. But Malone said Ocean Spray was unresponsive during that whole time and dragged the whole process out without ever having any intention of staying in Jersey.
“The whole thing was just so bizarre, and anybody who had any vision at all — Ray Charles could have seen this thing was a hoax,” Malone said.
The challenge of politics in this state is that our politicians are used to an entitlement culture that talks about jobs as “rights” and that companies should act as the government does, with no thought toward their responsibility to the shareholders. And it doesn’t work that way in the real world. Ocean Spray is a business. It should evaluate the a major facility expansion just as it evaluates any business investment. And even though it is painful, the fact that New Jersey was once very attractive to business and in the past several years has become the singularly most unattractive state in the country for business expansion must factor into their decision.
I don’t want to see Ocean Spray leave. My wife’s grandfather worked there many years ago. And I remember a New Jersey that was the leader in telecom, pharmaceuticals and others business that are rapidly moving away. Perhaps soon the politicians of this state will realize that the government should act to encourage business growth and expansion instead of acting as a Lyme infected tick that will sooner or later sap every ounce of energy from the host.
Read the entire article here.
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