After announcing plans last month to close its bottling plant in Relay, beer, wine and spirits company Diageo announced Monday it is expanding in Plainfield, Ill., where it has another bottling facility.
The company said it bought 37 acres and a 246,000-square-foot warehouse next to the existing plant, the primary manufacturing site for Diageo's Smirnoff branded products. Diageo invested $120 million to add three high-speed bottling lines to that plant in 2013.
"Plainfield is our largest manufacturing site in North America, and this investment gives us the opportunity and flexibility to expand our footprint there," Paul Gallagher, president of Diageo Americas Supply said in the announcement.
Diageo said it will close in Relay, in Baltimore County, by the end of July because it was being underutilized. The British company completed a $50 million upgrade of the plant on Washington Boulevard three years ago.
Diageo will continue warehousing and processing at the Relay site, where it employs about 100 people.
The liquors conglomerate inherited the complex when it bought Seagram's wines and spirits business in 2000, but the site has a long history with alcohol. It's where Maryland Distillery Inc. opened the state's first legal distillery after Prohibition was lifted in 1933.