B&M Baked Beans factory
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The B&M Baked Beans factory is a historic cannery building in Portland, Maine, USA. Constructed in 1913 in the East Deering neighborhood, it was built by the Burnham & Morrill Company. Baked beans were produced in the building until 2021. The building is a prominent landmark highly visible from Interstate 295. It is located at 1 Beanpot Circle.
The Burnham and Morrill Co. began in 1867 on Franklin Street in Portland as a canning factory for vegetables, meat, and fish. The company constructed the B&M Baked Beans factory in 1913. The factory first produced canned beans in 1927. It used a traditional open-pot baking process with iron cauldrons that weighed 200 pounds attached to a ceiling-mounted rail system. The cauldrons were filled with beans, molasses, and other ingredients on the top floor of the factory and baked for hours. The cooked beans were dumped into a chute and went down to the canning line.[1]
In 2021, owner B&G Foods Inc. announced that the B&M Baked Beans factory would close. In August of that year the company removed the factory's brick smoke stack.[2] In 2023, the new owner, Roux Institute, began demolition of ancillary factory buildings to make way for the construction of the Roux Institute campus.[3] The red B&M Brick Oven Baked Beans sign was removed from the building in September 2023.
The closure of the plant moved the production of the baked beans to the midwest.