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Oscar Mayer Chard factory: Workers prepare to leave

BBC Oscar MayerBBC
The food company set up in Chard in 1983 and is the town's second largest employer

Staff at a food company in Somerset are preparing to walk through the gates for the last time on Sunday.

After 38 years Oscar Mayer, Chard's second largest employer, is closing its two sites in the town with the loss of 860 jobs.

The firm said it was relocating elsewhere in the UK because it was too expensive to modernise the buildings.

Employees said news of the closure was a "big shock" for the town and they were "overwhelmingly sad".

Oscar Mayer has two sites in Chard, one for production and one for distribution and it has not confirmed where it will be moving to.

Shift manager Andrew Sochon, 38, has worked for the company in Chard since he was a teenager.

He said: "The hardest thing I've had to do in my life is to tell people they're going to be made redundant."

Shift Manager, Andrew Sochon
Andrew Sochon was recruited by Oscar Mayer while he was at school and has worked there for 22 years

The father-of-three said his last shift at the weekend would be emotional.

"It's like a family. A lot of good people work here. There has been a lot of change in last ten years.

"Foreign workers have come in. They supported the community and they've kept Oscar Mayer going. The friendships I've built are going to last me a lifetime."

Oscar Mayer makes its own brand of ready meals for some of the largest supermarkets but has seen a drop in demand owing to people making meals from scratch while working from home during the pandemic.

Plant-based products have surged in popularity but the company said it would not make them in Chard because of the risk of cross contamination with its meat products.

Final meal

Head of human resources Nancy Featon said: "The ready-meal market is incredibly challenging but most of all for the Oscar Mayer site in Chard.

"It's been about the site itself; the infrastructure, the logistics of it and the amount of investment needed to keep it operationally efficient was just too much."

The company has held job fairs to help staff find alternative work and 300 have already done so.

It has partnered with the Citizens Advice Bureau and Somerset County Council to provide training including English language and driving courses.

Oscar Mayer started as a family butcher's in South London in 1935 and expanded into food manufacturing across the UK, opening in Chard in 1983.

The last meal to be produced in Chard on Sunday will be Dauphinoise potatoes.