Kraft Foods Inc. said that it will eliminate 30 jobs from its Tarrytown complex by the end of the year as part of a national program to cut costs.

The cuts affect about 5 percent of a work force of about 600 at the Tarrytown site that includes Kraft employees and contractors in a beverage unit that oversees such brands as Maxwell House, Country Time, Kool-Aid and Crystal Light.

The job cuts in Tarrytown are part of 400 job reductions in the United States and Canada that Kraft plans by the end of 2008. Kraft, the world’s second-largest food company, also plans cuts at its corporate headquarters in Northfield, Ill., and offices in Toronto, Glenview, Ill., East Hanover, N.J and Madison, Wis.

Kraft is cutting jobs at a time when food companies nationally are facing higher ingredient prices and consumers are watching their spending in a weakening economy.

The Insl-X Products Corp. paint plant in Stony Point will close by Dec. 30, eliminating 60-65 jobs in Rockland County, a spokeswoman for the company’s new owner said.
Benjamin Moore & Co. announced in March that it had acquired Insl-X from owner James A. Weil of Scarsdale. Moore spokeswoman Eileen McComb said about two dozen office jobs in Stony Point, the Insl-X headquarters, would be moved to Moore’s headquarters in Montvale, N.J.
Terms of Moore’s acquisition of Insl-X were not disclosed. Moore is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Co.
Insl-X has been in Stony Point for 18 years. It was founded in 1948 by Weil’s father. Insl-x makes and sells its own brand of finishes; a number of acquisitions allowed it to expand from specialty and industrial products to architectural coatings.
In February the company paid off a $5.5 million bond that had been issued through the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency for the acquisition of 15 acres and the plant.
McComb said Moore bought the company because it would complement Moore’s holdings.
“I think we understood that some of the production was redundant,” she said. Moore has six paint plants, including one near Albany and another in New Jersey.
McComb said Moore will continue to operate Insl-X plants in Edgewater, Fla., San Antonio and Fort Worth, Texas, and Elk Grove, Ill.
Ronald Hicks, chief executive officer of Rockland Economic Development Corp., said the business group has offered to help Moore market the 150,000-square-foot property for sale or lease.

The Journal News cut 12 jobs today citing further erosion in ad revenue from retail, housing, automotive and employment sectors of the economy.

The cuts were part of a larger plan by the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett Co. Inc., to eliminate 1,000 jobs across the company’s 84 news properties in its Community Publishing division, which includes The Journal News and LoHud.com.

The number of positions eliminated at each newspaper was determined locally, McLean, Va.-based Gannett said.