{"id":501074,"date":"2026-02-26T15:43:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501074\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:43:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:43:31","slug":"crown-royal-bottling-plant-in-ontario-town-shuts-down-2-days-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501074\/","title":{"rendered":"Crown Royal bottling plant in Ontario town shuts down 2 days early"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The union representing workers at a Crown Royal<\/a> bottling facility in southwestern Ontario says it has been shuttered two days earlier than planned, potentially marking the end of a lengthy tug-of-war over the plant\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

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Plans to close the facility in Amherstburg<\/a>, Ont., were first announced in the summer by Diageo, the international drinks maker behind the Canadian whisky.<\/p>\n

Premier Doug Ford\u2019s office initially took a business-as-usual approach to the announcement<\/a>, before the premier decided to protest it at an event in September, pouring a bottle of Crown Royal onto the ground and calling Diageo executives \u201cdumb as a bag of hammers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The premier insisted the company keep the plant open and save the Amherstburg jobs or face a total ban of its whisky at LCBO stores in Ontario.<\/p>\n

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After months of tense back-and-forth, Ford reduced his demands. He accepted a promised $23 million<\/a> of spending across the province as a peace offering and agreed Crown Royal would be sold in Ontario.<\/p>\n

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Locally, Unifor \u2014 which represents some 200 workers who were at the plant \u2014 has been less impressed with the offering. They said the early closure of the facility is the \u201cfinal show of disrespect\u201d from Diageo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear Diageo didn\u2019t want to face the scrutiny that would have come on the final day of operations, so its overseas executives opted to slink out of Ontario instead,\u201d said\u00a0Unifor\u00a0Local 200 President John D\u2019Agnolo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cCanadians will not forget that Diageo is a company that chose to walk away from a loyal workforce and add insult to injury by bottling a marquee Canadian whisky in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union said workers were only told the plant would close early during their shift on Wednesday. They\u2019ll still be paid for the final two days of planned operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a sad day for our members and for this community, which has a century long storied history of whisky making,\u201d Unifor president Lana Payne said.<\/p>\n

Global News reached out to both Diageo and the Ford government for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size The union representing workers at a Crown Royal bottling facility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[192410,29878,43,44,13404,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-501074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-amherstburg","9":"tag-crown-royal","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ontario-politics","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}