FORESTPORT, N.Y. — Nirvana Spring Water Inc. disclosed yesterday in a state filing that it will close its bottling plant at 1 Nirvana Plaza in Forestport in Oneida County.
Seventy employees will lose their jobs starting in early September.
The bottled water company attributes the plant closing to a chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a notice posted on the state Department of Labor website in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The WARN Act requires businesses of a certain size to give notice of layoffs and closings before they happen.
The notice does not specify if the company has already filed for chapter 11.
Previous news on the company
In late August, 2013, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and the New York Business Development Corp. (NYBDC) announced a loan of $3.2 million to Nirvana. With the NYBDC loan, and other funding sources, Nirvana purchased a high-speed bottling line that was supposed to produce 12 million cases of bottled water annually and increase the company’s workforce by 50 people, the state comptroller’s office said in a news release then.
Nirvana, a family-operated business, employed more than 100 people at that time. The company obtained its water supply from the Nirvana Springs located on 2,000 acres of wilderness, and distributed its bottled water under the company’s own label throughout the Northeast as well as to customers in the Midwest and Southwest.
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