Ferrara to close North Chicago Jelly Belly plant

Jelly Belly parent Ferrara will shutter its North Chicago manufacturing facility this fall, the company confirmed Tuesday night.

The plant closure, first reported by the Sun-Times, will result in 66 layoffs. Chicago-based Ferrara announced plans to acquire Jelly Belly less than a year ago; financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

The company reported the layoffs in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice to the state last week. The WARN Act requires companies to give advance notice of certain mass layoffs and plant closures. In a statement, Ferrara said the Jelly Belly workers are being offered transfers to jobs at the candy company’s five other Chicago-area manufacturing facilities.

“After careful review of the current volumes produced here, we are moving our manufacturing into another facility,” the Lemonhead-maker said in a statement. The Lake County plant will close about Oct. 11, Ferrara said.

“We anticipate no impact to the Jelly Belly brand, our products or service to our customers. Jelly Belly remains a critical component of our growth trajectory,” the company said.

Jelly Belly was founded in Illinois in 1869, though the company is now headquartered in Fairfield, California. Ferrara was founded in Chicago’s Little Italy in 1908 and was acquired by Italian sweets giant Ferrero — the maker of Nutella — in 2017, though the companies are run as separate units. Ferrero, which is privately held and secretive about its finances and operations, opened an innovation lab in the former Marshall Field & Co. building downtown last year.