Central Ind. food plant closes doors

Really Cool Foods, a company whose opening in Cambridge, Ind., was celebrated by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels in 2008, has closed.

The closing will affect 131 workers, Chief Financial Officer Joseph Meyers said in a letter to government officials.

Meyers said the closure follows failed negotiations to sell the business to obtain an investment of new capital, the Associated Press reported.

The food company once stated it planned to hire 1,000 employees.

Really Cool Foods is a New York-based, organic foods company that started in 2005. Daniels attended the groundbreaking ceremony in 2007 and lauded the company’s choice in location and the economic benefits it could bring to the area.

Many of the goals the company had for Indiana did not come to pass.

Thirty-one employees were laid off in 2010, and in May 2011, the Western Wayne Sewer District Board said materials from the company’s plant were damaging pumps and sewage equipment in the area.

Earlier this month, the Palladium-Item newspaper in Richmond, Ind., reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service was looking at the plant after listeria was found there.

Listeria is a potentially harmful bacterium that can cause listeriosis, a disease that might lead to sepsis or meningitis.

The Department said the sampling was just routine, however, and the traces of the bacteria found were nothing out of the ordinary, the Palladium-Item
 reported.

The company’s website was never fully launched. Only the site’s front page is accessible, which displays a short slideshow of entrées and a message inviting customers back to the site at a later date.

“We’re busy cooking up some REALLY COOL stuff and will be back soon,” the site states. “REALLY.”

The Indiana Democratic Party was quick to characterize the closure as another example of what it sees as failed job promises by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

Daniels’s office had not released any statements regarding the plant’s closure as of Monday.

— Jake New