Silgan donation turns into five tons of food

FORT MADISON – An Iowa Food Bank truck pulled up to the Fort Madison Food Pantry Tuesday morning with about 4.5 tons of food.
It was a welcome blessing to the facility that was running low on inventory while at the same time seeing an uptick in customers, mostly due to the increasing price of groceries.
The delivery of food was made possible with a $2,000 donation from Silgan Containers Corp. of Fort Madison.
Employees of the can manufacturing company on the city’s southwest side raised funds during the month of February and made the donation to the food pantry instead of just collecting can goods.
“Its called the Silgan 2025 canned food collection. The president puts it out each February,” said Mitzie Pitford, Silgan’s Human Resource manager in Fort Madison.
Plant manager Steve Vukcevich said Pitford put the event together and focused on raising funds instead of food donations because the company could do more for the food pantry with money.
The food pantry can buy food from the Iowa Food Bank at about .19 per pound. The donation included $1,700 in Food Bank purchases which amounted to just over 8,900 lbs. Pitford used the remaining $300 to purchase chili beans and pork and beans from a local grocery.
“We can’t always get everything from the food bank. It changes, so you never know. That’s why what we offer changes routinely. People sometimes will say ‘Gosh, I’m sick of chicken’, but that’s all we can get,” said FM Food Pantry Director Shelly Mueller.
“If we didn’t have the Iowa Food Bank, we could only serve a fraction of the people we do. People like Silgan and other manufacturers make nice size contributions in food or money. We really try to put that towards the trucks because we can do so much more with it.”
Steven Vukcevich has been plant manager at Silgan since December of 2019. He replaced Bruce Hardy who retired at that time.
Vukcevich said he didn’t know how long the facility has been making donations, but it’s been years.
“I don’t know how many years we’ve been doing it, but in February the president put the challenge out to all the plants to donate canned goods to a food pantry. Mitsy worked this up as a way to raise money instead of cans. I think there were a few canned goods, but we encouraged employees to donate money because we could do more for the pantry that way,” he said.

“$2,000…that’s pretty good for 120 people.”
Silgan currently has 135 people working four shifts 24/7 and recently they’ve been encouraged from the top down to do more for local communities.
“Years ago it wasn’t as encouraged as much as it is now. We’re encouraged to do that, so people know who we are. We make cans and lids and no one knows that. Our label isn’t on those can,” he said.
Silgan is going on 50 years of operations in Fort Madison.
Silgan in Fort Madison makes the cans for Vienna sausages at ConAgra as well as lids for 3 oz. cat food cans.
Mueller said the pantry is better off because of groups like Silgan and the Iowa Food Bank.
“If the food bank dropped out of our lives, we would have to buy all this retail. It’s imperative to the mission to be able to buy at that price. And it multiplies the impact of that dollar if we can buy it at that price versus a food drive,” Mueller said.
“You’re not going to get anything to equate to this. But anything and everything is appreciated because not everyone works in a facility that can do this type of thing."
Mueller said demand is up for the food pantry services because of the price of groceries right now.
“People just can’t make ends meet. If you have a large family, or we see people who planned for retirement on fixed incomes are now in a pinch because that budget is just not enough,” she said.
“We get a lot of people in here who are very sad to be here, but they either have to come here or not buy prescriptions. And that’s another expense that just won’t stretch.”
The food bank dropped off nine pallets of food including grape juice, dried milk, fruit, potatoes, and a variety of canned goods, and not only did the Silgan employees donate money, but about 20 of them showed up to help get the food inside and put away along side food pantry volunteers.