130 jobs cut as Plant City tomato producer shuts farm operations

Ag-Mart Produce, which operates as Santa Sweets, is laying off 120 employees as it “discontinues domestic farming operations.”

Most of the cuts will happen at a Plant City facility where 104 people will lose their jobs. The company will also lay off eight employees in Manatee County — four in Myakka City and four in Duette — and eight in Jennings, which is in Hamilton County at the state line with Georgia. In May the company laid off 10 employees in Immokalee, eastern Collier County. 

In all, 130 people will have lost their jobs when the process is over, the company says.

In a series of letters to state officials, Ag-Mart’s chief operating officer George Binck writes that it is ceasing operations and conducting the layoffs because of “the inability to compete with submarket pricing of imported produce from such areas as Mexico and the Dominican Republic.”

The letters were sent to meet WARN Notice requirements. Federal law requires companies to provide states with Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification notices when making job cuts.

According to profiles of the company Bloomberg’s and Dunn & Bradstreet’s website, Ag-Mart does business as Santa Sweets Inc. The letters to the state were written on Santa Sweets letterhead and the website posted on Ag-Mart’s Facebook page is Santa Sweets.’

The website describes the business as “a family-run company and the growers behind the famous Authentic Grape Tomato” that was founded in Camden, New Jersey in the 1940s. The website shows that along with Florida the company has operations in Cedarville, New Jersey; Inland, California; Nogales, Arizona; and Sonora, Mexico.

Binck, the COO, did not respond to a question about whether jobs at the New Jersey operation, the only other U.S. facility listed as a farm on the company’s website, would be affected. That state’s WARN database did not list any layoffs by Ag-Mart or Santa Sweets as of July 19.

Employees were notified of the job cuts earlier this month and the layoffs could begin Sept. 15 and last through February. But, according to the letters, “it is difficult to predict with certainty the exact termination dates of these employees.”