Slim Jims are a trending topic on Twitter this afternoon, though it doesn't have anything to do with parent company ConAgra closing its Slim Jim plant in Garner today.

Fans of the meat snack's well-known pitchman, Macho Man Randy Savage, took to Twitter to mourn the death of the wrestling star.

The celebrity gossip site TMZ first reported Savage's death (CNN confirmed it), which occurred this morning as a Jeep he was driving veered across the road and hit a tree.

Proving the power of a good pitch, "Slim Jim" was trending on the social networking site Twitter mid-Friday at least an hour before "Macho Man" or "Savage" also made the cut.

Meanwhile, our article in today's paper mentions the changes going on at Slim Jim and ConAgra. The company decided it would be cheaper to transfer production to Ohio rather than rebuild the Garner plant that suffered an explosion in June 2009, says  N&O staff writer Sarah Nagem. Until the blast, Garner had been the world's only Slim Jim production site.

So it's likely that Randy Savage was snapping into a piece of Garner every time he uttered his famous phrase.

More than a dozen companies are expected to offer interviews and jobs this month exclusively to local ConAgra employees who will lose their jobs in April and May.

About 520 remaining ConAgra employees are slated to lose their jobs in what will be one of the region's biggest mass layoffs when the snack food maker's Garner facility closes in late May.

To help the affected workers find other opportunities, ConAgra and the Capital Area Workforce Development Board have scheduled an employment fair for March 30, about two months before ConAgra shuts down the local facility that produced Slim Jim snacks.

The thriving Garner facility was never able to recover from an explosion in 2009 that killed four people.

ConAgra will close its Garner Slim Jim factory in May and lay off hundreds of remaining workers, nearly two years after an explosion damaged the facility and killed four people.

The company plans to lay off about 234 employees on or around April 16, according to a notice filed with the N.C. Department of Commerce under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The plant is scheduled to close on May 27, and about 200 remaining employees will be let go or transferred by then, spokesman Dave Jackson said Monday.

After reaching a deal with the union that represents hourly employees, ConAgra agreed to provide severance, outplacement services, job retraining and performance incentives to help employees with the transition, he added.

The town of Garner has created a nonprofit that will take ownership of the ConAgra facility when the company closes down its Slim Jim factory later this year.

ConAgra said last year that it would donate the factory and 106 acres along Interstate 40 to the town when it closes.

The company is also giving Garner $3 million, $500,000 of which is being used to study and market the tract on Jones Sausage Road.

The nonprofit, called the Garner Economic Development Corporation, will accept the assets and use the next eight or nine months to make plans for the property.
 

Even as ConAgra Foods weighs the future of its Slim Jim manufacturing plant in Garner, the company is reviving marketing of the meat snacks with a muscled, violent pitchman.

ConAgra announced today a promotional deal with World Wrestling Entertainment, and its first advertising campaign since an explosion at the Garner plant last summer killed four workers and halted Slim Jim production. A WWE star known as the Edge will serve as the "Spicy Side" campaign's spokesman.

The one-year partnership was originally planned for last summer, but the plant explosion put it on hold, the New York Post reports. Slim Jim also will be the "official meat snack of WWE."

Rumor has it that top corporate brass at ConAgra Foods will decide on the future of the company's Slim Jim plant in Garner during a meeting on Thursday in Omaha, Neb.

Don't hold your breath.

A decision to close or keep the plant, which was damaged in an explosion last June that killed four people, could come soon, but Tony Beasley, Garner's economic development director, doesn't expect news this week.

"They're having a routine board meeting on the 18th and we've been getting calls from employees that a decision is coming," Beasley said.

Garner officials are working with their counterparts at the state level to come up with an incentives package aimed at keeping the plant open. ConAgra laid off about half of the plant's 750 workers last fall and is said to be considering whether to pump more money into it or move production elsewhere.

ConAgra doesn't expect to receive a final insurance settlement related to the June explosion at its Garner Slim Jim plant until later next year.

The company initially projected it would get the insurance money during its current fiscal year, which ends in May.

But "given the complexity of the claim ... and based on additional analysis of the claim process, we now expect the final settlement of the insurance claim to be delayed until fiscal 2011," chief financial officer John Gehring told analysts on a conference call today to discuss ConAgra's second-quarter results.

The Omaha, Neb.-based company lost about half of its Slim Jim production when the explosion destroyed some of the Garner plant, killer four people and injured scores more. ConAgra has shifted some Slim Jim production to a plant in Ohio and also is using outside manufacturers.

Less than a week after ConAgra Foods told about 300 of workers at its Garner Slim Jim they will be let go, the company reported this morning that quarterly profit jumped 34 percent.

The Omaha, Neb., company is selling more Healthy Choice and Marie Callender's dinners and other prepared foods as consumers cook meals at home during the recession. Lower commodity costs also boosted profit.

Operating profit rose to $250 million during the quarter ended Aug. 30, up 34 percent from the same period last year. The company also raised its profit projection for the full year.

But total revenue during the latest quarter fell 3 percent to $2.96 billion, hurt by weaker Slim Jim sales and a decline in its commercial foods division.

Slim Jim production was disrupted by the June explosion at the Garner plant, which killed three workers.

Authorities have recovered the body of one female employee and are still trying to reach a second deceased person inside the Slim Jim factory in ... more