PORTLAND, Maine — Portland's B&M baked beans factory will soon be a thing of the past, after more than a century in the city's Back Cove.
The nonprofit Institute for Digital Engineering and Life Sciences (IDEALS) will be developing the campus, which will be home to the Roux Institute at Northeastern University, a graduate school and research center based in Portland, along with other companies.
IDEALS reached an agreement to buy the 13.5-acre property and turn it into a campus that will include partner companies, housing, and other amenities, according to a release from B&G Foods, which owns B&M.
B&G Foods said it will move the Portland factory's manufacturing operations to other facilities in the country.
Rendering of the Roux Institute campus
“The Portland community has been the home to B&M for more than a century, and while this was a very difficult decision, we believe it is in the best interest for the future of Portland. We are confident The Roux Institute will build a new longstanding legacy on the property, one that will enrich Portland residents in new and exciting ways, and will endure as a force for good in the community for generations to come,” Casey Keller, president and CEO of B&G Foods, said in Monday's release.
There are currently about 86 employees at the Portland manufacturing facility, according to B&G Foods. The company said it has put in place a plan to offer all eligible employees severance and career transition support, some of which will be through the Roux Institute itself. B&G Foods said the Roux Institute plans to help connect them with Maine employers, as well as help find them educational opportunities and possible student pathways into the institute.
B&G Foods said the B&M manufacturing building will become the anchor of the new campus, providing an incubator lab and office space for start-up companies
In early August, the factory's smokestack was taken down after being a staple of the Casco Bay skyline since 1956. It had not been in use for over 20 years.
B&M was founded by George Burnham and Charles S. Morrill in 1867, offering canned products meat, vegetable, and fish products.
The first factory opened on Franklin Street in Portland in 1867, though according to the B&M website some sources say their first factory was actually in Machiasport, Maine.
The factory on the mouth of Back Cove wasn't built until 1913. The then-state-of-the-art four-story factory didn't start producing baked beans until the 1920s when B&M began experimenting with brick-oven beans in an attempt to offset declines in their other products.
From then on, brick-oven beans became synonymous with B&M and the factory.