Oscar Mayer equipment from Wisconsin facility up for sale

MADISON, Wis. — More than 2,000 pieces of equipment from the shuttered Oscar Mayer plant in Wisconsin are up for auction.

The equipment is now available for purchase at the Madison plant and online, the Wisconsin State Journal reported .

Reich Brothers Holdings and Rabin Worldwide are two companies that buy shuttered factories and sell the assets. They’re hosting the three-day sale that includes grinders, printing and packaging machines, boilers and refrigeration units. As many as 500 bidders from all over the world are expected to attend the auction either in person or online, said Hazel Tria, who heads Rabin’s auction operations.

Jeff Olson, of Hallman Lindsay Paints in Sun Prairie, toured the facility this week to get an advance look at the available equipment. Having grown up near the plant, Olson said he knew many people who worked that and that it was strange to see the plant dismantled piece by piece.

“There are a lot of nice things we could use,” he said.

Parent company Kraft Heinz closed the Madison facility in June as part of a corporate restructuring that resulted from the 2015 merger of Kraft Foods Group and H.J. Heinz Co.

About a third of the facility’s equipment was taken to other Kraft Heinz factories. Some of the machines that had a proprietary process and were too old to move were destroyed, said Josh Conners, a longtime maintenance supervisor at the plant who was hired to maintain the equipment during the shuttering process.

Reich and Rabin purchased the remaining equipment in October.