Three months after completing a huge merger, Keurig Dr Pepper announced 118 Vermont job losses Wednesday, most of them at its Waterbury location.
The jobs will end Jan. 4, said Lindsay Kurrle, Vermont’s commissioner of labor. The company is laying off 500 people nationwide, she said. Eighty-two of the affected Vermont workers are employed at a production center in Waterbury that will be closed, Kurrle said. Some of the Vermont job losses will happen at Keurig facilities in Essex and Williston.
Kurrle said the company, which has headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Plano, Texas, started notifying its workers on Thursday.
Losing the manufacturing jobs is a blow, but Kurrle noted that many Vermont employers are reporting that a shortage of such workers is holding back production, so, she said, there might be some opportunities for the laid-off Keurig workers to find new positions.
“I have a lot of hope,” she said. “Every day, employers are saying, ‘We have vacancies. We will do everything we can to connect the skillset.’”
In Vermont, Keurig Green Mountain laid off 35 workers in May, 40 in June 2017, 108 in June 2016 and 200 in 2015.
Keurig Green Mountain completed a merger in July with Dr Pepper Snapple Group, creating a huge beverage company with revenues of about $11 billion, according to a joint press release from the two companies that was published on Business Wire last summer. The new company is the seventh-largest food and beverage concern in North America, the two said. It has more than 25,000 workers and 120 North American offices, manufacturing plants, warehouses and distribution centers.
The Massachusetts-based Keurig, which started selling its single-use coffee pods or “K-cups” in 1998, was acquired by Vermont’s Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in 2006.
