Posted on: Sunday, October 10, 2004

Foremost to close tomorrow

By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser Staff Writer

Foremost Dairies-Hawai'i will close its doors tomorrow, rather than wait until mid-November as previously announced.

The announcement didn't surprise Teamster members, who had been talking to the company about severance agreements for the remaining 87 employees, said Mel Kahele, president of Teamsters and Allied Workers Local 996. Severance package details were not forthcoming, but the members will meet tomorrow to vote, said Lynette Lo Tom, a spokeswoman for Foremost.

The employees will either retire or find employment at Hawai'i's only milk processor, Meadow Gold, Kahele said.

"They actually want to come to a closure on this," Kahele said last night. "It's been all so stressful and burdensome. This way they can move on."

The milk producer announced last month that it will close its Kalihi factory and lay off its workers because it could not afford to make upgrades necessary to keep the facility open.

"They wanted to keep it open as long as they could," Lo Tom said. "But the losses were too much."

The labor union, however, is considering legal issues that could arise should the milk processor reopen as a nonunion firm.

The decision to close the 51-year-old dairy comes nine months after Foremost was sold by House Foods Corp. for an undisclosed amount to a group of investors, including Big Island dairy owner Bahman Sadeghi.

"We have solicited bids to buy the processing equipment, the fleet and the Foremost brand so we will have the funds necessary to meet our obligations to customers, employees and vendors," Sadeghi said in a written statement yesterday.

The owners say they have pumped nearly $2 million into the company in an attempt to turn it around. Right up until last month there was hope that the Foremost name would survive even as the company announced plans to shut down its facility at 2277 Kamehameha Highway.

Meadow Gold is now the only milk processor in Hawai'i. Foremost had stopped milk processing in August so it could assess equipment problems at its plant. It distributed milk and other dairy products processed by Meadow Gold under the Foremost name.

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com or 395-8831.

Correction: Mel Kahele is president of Teamsters and Allied Workers Local 996. A previous version of this story misspelled his last name.