Bunge, a soybrean processing plant, has announced it plans to stop processing soybeans and shut the plant down, resulting in the loss of Illinois manufacturing jobs.

The shutdown is permanent.

Bunge has been an employer in the Danville, Illinois area for decades. They have almost 300 employees, and although 100 jobs are cut now, outlook on the rest of the employees’ statuses has yet to be decided.

“We have to work with the union on (identifying) the hourly employees,” said Deb Sidell, spokeswoman for St. Louis-based Bunge North America, told Commercial-News.com.

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President Obama has said that he wants to ship Guantánamo Bay detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center, a move that would create hundreds of Illinois jobs (Click here).

According to CSMonitor.com, Thomson Correctional Center is a nine-year-old underutilized state prison in northwest Illinois and the federal prison system’s second “Supermax” facility.

At an eight-hour hearing in late December at in nearby Sterling, Ill., political leaders questioned state and federal officials and took public comments on whether the sale of the facility to the US Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense would be a good deal and would guarantee the 3,000 jobs and $1 billion in development announced in the planning.

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Ford Motor Co. said it will add 1,200 jobs in Illinois at its Chicago assembly plant later this year to build the new Explorer sport utility vehicle, a person briefed on the matter said (click here).

The company and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn were scheduled to make the announcement on Tuesday at the factory, but Quinn told reporters in Chicago on Monday that 1,200 new jobs were coming to Illinois.

“Tomorrow, in one day, we’re going to get 1,200 new jobs for Illinois,” Quinn said at a breakfast event.

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