Hershey Builds Another Huge Pennsylvania Chocolate Facility
The Hershey Company is building a 250,000-square-foot chocolate facility in Hershey, Pennsylvania, to expand production capabilities for some of its candy brands, including Reese’s, Kit Kat, and Hershey’s.
The facility will be located on a 55-acre site near the company’s Reese’s plant, the company announced. The town of Hershey, which has streetlights shaped like Chocolate Kisses, already has corporate offices and two other Hershey manufacturing plants.
The expansion is part of a $1 billion investment in the company’s supply chain network. Along with the facility, Hershey will build 13 new production lines and upgrade 11 existing lines in other North American facilities.
The company has two other Pennsylvania locations—Lancaster, where it makes Twizzlers Candy; and Hazleton, where it produces Cadbury, Caramello, and Kit Kat products. Elsewhere in the United States, there’s Robinson, Illinois, home of the Heath bar; Stuarts Draft, Virginia, its second-largest U.S. plant which mostly makes products with peanuts; and Memphis, Tennessee, the home of Ice Breakers, where it also makes gum, mints, and licorice.
A company financial report noted a nearly 15 percent sales increase in Hershey’s gum products, attributing it to less mask-wearing.
Internationally, Hershey has facilities in Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, and United Arab Emirates. It has approximately 19,000 employees around the world.
As the company grows in the United States, it is streamlining operations internationally.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, Hershey continued an “International Optimization Program,” according to its most recent financial filings. That effort started in 2018–19, a company spokesman told The Epoch Times. At that time Hershey eliminated manufacturing in China, but it still sells products there.
The company has continued to simplify and streamline some international markets and that has included workforce reductions of approximately 350 positions outside of the United States.
It is premature to say how many jobs will be created by its new hometown facility in Pennsylvania, but the project will grow and add jobs incrementally, a company spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email, adding that no decisions have been made on timing for filling positions, and internal Hershey employees will be eligible to apply. The facility is not expected to be operational until sometime in 2024.
Bilingual Manufacturing
Last week, Hershey announced that its Hazleton location is its first bilingual manufacturing facility, with Spanish and English-speaking employees working together.
Although it was only recently publicly announced in a press release, the “Say Hola” initiative has been in place for almost a year. The company provides training in English and Spanish. All signs, labels, and forms are in both languages, and the company ensures bilingual employees always have resources for communication on the manufacturing floor.
In the past 20 years, Hazleton’s Hispanic population has grown from five percent to more than 60 percent of the total population, the company said in a statement. The initiative helps attract workers.
“By launching ‘Say Hola’ and opening its doors to the changing Hazleton community, Hershey is seeing an increase in employee retention and highly experienced individuals applying for positions,” the statement said. “In fact, more than 90 percent of the facility’s recruitment classes now have the desired manufacturing experience versus 50 percent of recruitment classes prior to program launch. The community’s enthusiasm about the transformation to a bilingual plant and word-of-mouth awareness has also reduced recruitment costs.”
“The ‘Say Hola’ initiative showcases Hershey’s commitment to our people and the communities in which we live and work—both on a local and global scale,” Alicia Petross, chief diversity officer said in a statement.
“‘Say Hola’ has accelerated the diversity of our workforce—a key element of our [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] roadmap—and provided upskilling, improved recruiting and retention, and most importantly, the program fosters a workplace that looks more like the communities our colleagues live in.”
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