THS Treehouse Foods Inc

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa, March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Bay Valley Foods, a division of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE:THS), reported today that the Company plans to repair and reopen its New Hampton, Iowa plant that was damaged by an early morning fire Friday, February 29. No one was injured in the fire and related damage that occurred at approximately 4:00 a.m. Friday. The cause of the fire, which resulted in structural damage to the plant's second story, is still being investigated. The New Hampton facility employs 61 people and is one of three Bay Valley Foods plants that processes non-dairy powdered creamers and other dry powdered products. George Jurkovich, Senior Vice President - Operations, said, "We are proud of the effective response of the New Hampton plant management and employee team. As a result of their efforts and training, the plant was safely evacuated and no one was injured. Within hours of the fire, a team of Company engineers and plant operations personnel joined plant management on the scene to assess the damage to plant and equipment. The plant's management will meet with all employees on Monday and begin the recovery process." Bay Valley Foods' customers served by the New Hampton plant will in the interim be supplied by the Company's Wayland, Michigan and Pecatonica, Illinois plants. "Our primary goal is to do everything possible to meet all of our customers' product requirements," Jurkovich said. The New Hampton plant only supplies industrial customers. The Company is the largest manufacturer of powdered creamer in the United States based on sales volume. While the full financial impact of the fire and the reconstruction process is still being assessed, TreeHouse Foods does not believe the financial implications of the fire will be material to the Company. Bob Sanford, New Hampton plant manager, said, "We especially want to thank the New Hampton Volunteer Fire Department, neighboring fire departments and the Chickasaw County Emergency Management Team for their prompt and skilled response in containing and extinguishing the fire. We are also grateful to the New Hampton community for their expressions of support. Most of all, we are thankful no one was injured, and we commend the third-shift employees for their quick actions in notifying the local fire department and preventing injuries. The Company is now concentrating on the rebuilding and recovery process and we're already looking forward to full resumption of all operations." This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements include all statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts, and can generally be identified by the use of words such as "may," "should," "could," "expects," "seek to," "anticipates," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "intends," "predicts," "projects," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of such terms and other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company or its industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievement expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050726/CGTREELOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: Bay Valley Foods CONTACT: Christine Woolsey, +1-312-505-5268, for Bay Valley Foods Web site: http://www.treehousefoods.com/

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