Progressive Conservative MLA Margaret Johnson says she met with Agropur executives when she was agriculture minister, and they told her the closure of the Sussex-area dairy plant was a possibility.
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Mark Leger · CBC News
· Posted: May 06, 2026 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago
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The Sussex-area Agropur plant is set to close by the end of 2028, with around 60 people losing their jobs. (Roger Cosman/CBC)
A former provincial agriculture minister says Agropur executives raised the possibility of closing its Sussex-area dairy plant in a meeting at least three years ago.
Margaret Johnson, the Progressive Conservative MLA in Carleton-Victoria, said she asked company officials at the time to do what they could to keep the Butternut Valley plant in operation.
“Their concern was whether it was financially feasible for them to continue operating the Sussex plant,” Johnson said. “They were entertaining how they could repurpose [the plant] or if, in fact, they would have to look at closing that plant at that time.”
She said they told her the company had already made “huge investments in the Bedford plant and that was [where] they had the greatest capacity to do value-added [products].”
PC MLA Margaret Johnson was the agriculture minister in the previous government and had a meeting with Agropur three years ago about the future of its New Brunswick operations. » Read More
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