Suiza Dairy is laying off 480 employees and discontinuing its fresh milk operations. The company has closed its plants in Rio Piedras and Ponce but will continue to produce UHT milk.

Impact on the Community:

The loss of 480 jobs will have a significant impact on the local economy. Many of the affected employees are the sole breadwinners for their families. The closure of the plants will also eliminate a major source of fresh milk for the island.

Overall, the closure of Suiza Dairy's fresh milk operations is a major setback for the Puerto Rican dairy industry and the local community.

Suiza Dairy's general manager, Pablo Vallejo, and the company's spokesperson, labor lawyer Ángel Muñoz Noya, announced on Friday a partial suspension of operations in the fresh milk line.

"Today I have the sad, sad mission of giving news that we really regret, because we have decided to make a temporary partial suspension of operations in Puerto Rico," Vallejo said at a press conference.

"Why do I say temporary partial suspension of operations? Partial because we are not going to paralyze the entire operation, we are going to continue operating, but we are going to stop the operations of the San Juan plant, we are going to stop the operations of the Distribution Center in Ponce and we are going to stop the operations of the base plant in Aguadilla, we will continue, however, with the operation in the Vida line or in the Vida plant in Aguadilla. That means, that means that unfortunately, unfortunately we will have to lay off 480 workers. That is really painful for us, many of them have worked for decades in Suiza, really I always consider that a company is a family and having to part with them for a situation that we consider to be absolutely unfair really hurts us," he added. The conflict paralyzed the production of fresh milk and affected farmers for almost a week, who had to discard some 600,000 quarts of raw milk.