Seattle bottle maker caught in Bud Light brouhaha lays off hundreds

Nearly 250 workers have been laid off from the Seattle bottle manufacturing plant owned by a Luxembourg conglomerate caught up in the anti-transgender backlash against Bud Light last year.

Packaging company Ardagh Group will cut 244 jobs from July 1, following the “indefinite reduction of production” at its East Marginal Way factory, a spokesperson said on Friday. It was unclear if and when the facility could reopen.

Ardagh blamed the reductions on “continued pressure from low-cost imports from China, Chile and Mexico, as well as market conditions,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. .

Ardagh, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of glass and metal packaging, is struggling with mounting debt as its customers cut back orders.

But Ardagh has also been the victim of a consumer backlash against one of its biggest clients, AB InBev, according to the trade press. The backlash began last April after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney promoted Bud Light, an InBev brand, on social media. Some conservatives have pushed for a boycott of Bud Light.

In June, Bud Light lost its spot as the top-selling American beer to Modelo Especial, from InBev rival Constellation Brands, according to media reports.

Ardagh did not explicitly mention the backlash, according to trade papers, and the company’s spokesperson declined Friday to comment on whether “market conditions” included InBev’s consumer woes.

But last July, Ardagh admitted that shipments had been “significantly affected by the controversy surrounding a major beer brand, of which we are a major supplier, resulting in a reduction in demand for some of our products”, according to Food Drive, an industry magazine.

Even in February, Ardagh said the decline in orders “had been exacerbated by the disruption of a major beer brand from April 2023,” according to a Glass International article.

In May, Ardagh reported an 11% drop in sales at its North American glass packaging business for the first three months of the year.

The Seattle layoffs follow hundreds of job cuts at other Ardagh facilities.

However, Ardagh is not leaving Seattle yet.

The company said Friday it did not yet know whether the layoffs would be permanent — they were listed as “temporary” in a state filing — and added that “if market conditions change, Ardagh will consider restarting production at its Seattle factory.

As of April 2024, Modelo was still the top-selling beer in the United States, while sales of Bud Light were down 28% from 12 months earlier, according to Bump Williams Consulting.