Ardagh closing Illinois plant

Ardagh Group plans to close one of its U.S. glass container plants in April, The Irish Times reported this week.

The company is parent to glass container plants in Dunkirk and Winchester.

It announced this week it will permanently cease production at its plant in Lincoln, Illinois, around April 30.

The plant employs about 150.

“This footprint adjustment, combined with our ongoing focus on cost reduction, aims to further enhance our competitiveness, as well as our optimizing the effectiveness of our capital investments,” the company said in a press release.

Ardagh closed a beer-bottle manufacturing plant in Milford, Massachusetts, last March, with a loss of about 250 jobs. It then cut production in half at a plant in Louisiana, resulting in further layoffs.

New product

POET, parent of POET Biorefining-Portland, has entered the asphalt market with a newest green alternative to fossil-fuel products. It’s called “JIVE” and is a proprietary corn-oil-based product already in use by construction companies to modify or rejuvenate asphalt in roads.

“This is the latest example of POET developing new technology to move our world toward true sustainability,” POET chief executive officer Jeff Broin said this week in a prepared statement. “We must learn to utilize materials harvested from the surface of the earth rather than pulling more crude oil from below. Every mile paved using JIVE and recycled materials helps save the planet and helps save taxpayer dollars.”

The product makes roads more resilient in both high- and low-temperature conditions. The company said it helps roads resist cracking in cold weather and rutting during the warm season. It is also used to soften old asphalt so that it can be recycled into new roads.

“This is a lower-cost, better-performing product than the petroleum modifiers used in the past,” said Matt Reiners, vice president of business development for POET Nutrition. 

Rubber chicken?

Tyson Foods Inc., parent of Tyson Mexican Original of Portland, is recalling more than 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets that may have been contaminated with rubber, The Washington Post reported this week.

The products were recalled after the company received complaints of "extraneous material" found in packaged White Meat Panko Chicken Nuggets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. 

The recall was listed under the Class I category, meaning there's "reasonable probability" that consumption of contaminated food will cause serious health consequences or death.

But no illnesses have been reported.

Tyson Foods said consumers contacted the company after they found small pieces of soft, blue rubber in a "very small number" of packages.

The decision to recall 36,420 pounds of product was made "out of an abundance of caution.”