The Murray Utah and Harrisville Utah canneries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will consolidate their operations beginning January 2021, the Church announced Monday, Aug. 17.
The operations of the Murray Cannery, located at 4373 S. Main St., will be closed and move north to Harrisville. The consolidation comes in response to changing processing demands and is based on increased efficiencies and outputs available through the state-of-the-art equipment and processing capacity available at the Harrisville cannery facility, which was dedicated in May 2017.
The decision to consolidate is not related to the effects of COVID-19, according to the Church’s Newsroom, which announced the consolidation. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, food distributions through bishops’ storehouses and humanitarian deliveries from the Church to food banks throughout the U.S. have continued uninterrupted thanks to the dedicated and ongoing work of Church employees and volunteers.
“Cannery operations continue to be an integral part of the Church’s strategy to support food security initiatives in our communities,” said Guillermo Antivilo, director of the production and distribution division of the Welfare and Self-Reliance Services Department.
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Employees and volunteers currently working and serving at the Murray cannery will be reassigned to similar positions at other Church facilities as operations there are discontinued.
The Murray facility is one of five canneries owned and operated by the Church in the United States. Other facilities are located in Garden City, Idaho; Harrisville, Utah; Houston, Texas; and Welfare Square in Salt Lake City. Each facility packages food grown on Church-owned farms and operates as just one piece of a vast network of food production, processing and distribution organized by the Church throughout the U.S. and Canada.
