Flagstone Foods, a large national nut snacks manufacturer, plans to lay off 225 people at its El Paso factory, about two years after the company had announced plans to expand here.
The layoffs are to be completed by the end of 2025, a company official said. The laid-off workers will receive severance pay and job-search assistance, according to a company news release.
The factory, in the Butterfield Trail Industrial Park on El Paso airport-owned land in East-Central El Paso, will continue to employ 139 people, Lyndsy Gumz, Flagstone vice president of human resources, said in an email.
This is the first major layoff in El Paso since earlier in 2025, when two federal contractors tied to federal immigration services laid off 474 workers.
Also, in May, Lacroix, a French electronics manufacturer, announced it would close two factories with just over 1,100 workers by the end of 2025 in Juarez, Mexico, just across the United States-Mexico border from El Paso, and close its El Paso warehouse with 12 employees.
El Paso County’s unemployment rate was 4.5% in August, slightly higher than the 4.2% rate in August 2024, show the latest data available from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The national unemployment rate was 4.3% in August.
Flagstone, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is shifting production of its private-label snacks to factories in North Carolina and Alabama to optimize production and reliability for private-label customers, Gumz said.
The company’s main business is producing private-label snack nuts products for major retailers.
The El Paso factory will be devoted totally to production of its Emerald Nuts brand, which it acquired in 2023 from Campbell Soup Co., Flagstone officials said.
It will be the “Emerald Nuts’ Center of Excellence,” according to the company news release.
“While we had initially anticipated seeing workforce growth in El Paso, consumer preferences drive our production priorities as they do any company, and we must evolve in this direction to best serve our customers,” Larry Appel, Flagstone chief executive officer, said in a statement.
The El Paso workforce has “performed well, and this is no reflection on their work,” he said.
“We remain committed to not simply operating in El Paso but making the facility a ‘best-in-class’ snack nut producer focusing squarely on our Emerald brand of products,” Appel said.
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In late 2023, Flagstone officials announced a $28.2 million expansion of its El Paso nuts processing factory and distribution facilities, and received a commitment from the El Paso City Council and El Paso County Commissioners Court for $1.24 million in property tax rebates over several years to help pay for the project.
However, Flagstone never finalized the agreements for the tax rebates and no tax rebates were received, Gumz said.
Gumz left unclear whether any expansion work was done.
Flagstone had planned to convert some warehouse space into factory space and additional office space at its three-building complex on Leigh Fisher Boulevard to accommodate the production of the Emerald Nuts brand.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Flagstone Foods’ El Paso snacks factory laying off 225 workers by end of 2025
Reporting by Vic Kolenc, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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