Weekly Regional Business Intelligence | | | Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | | | Andriani announces 800 store expansion for its Felicia Pasta brand Andriani Ltd. has announced a major distribution expansion for its Felicia Pasta line, produced at its Innovation Park plant opened last year. The brand is introducing its gluten-free pasta in 800 retail stores across the country — primarily in Loblaws, but also with shelf placements in Metro, Healthy Planet, Amazon and Costco. They’re launching with seven SKUs, all of them framed as being in the better-for-you, natural food categories — made with things like oat, buckwheat, chickpeas and similar high-fibre inputs. “Canadians want healthier pasta, but most options miss on taste and texture, limiting repeat purchase,” said Felicia Canada’s marketing director Naila Bassin. “Felicia has proven it can grow the entire pasta category in its homeland of Italy, and we aim to repeat this winning model in Canada.” It’s a substantial distribution announcement from Andriani, which only opened the plant last fall. “Canada is a strategic market for our next phase of growth,” said Carlo Stocco, managing director of North America for Andriani. “With our London, Ontario facility, we can deliver consistent supply at scale while maintaining full control over quality. This allows us to bring a new standard of naturally gluten-free pasta to Canadian consumers, delivering the perfect balance of taste and texture for all families.” The upshot: A big national distribution deal with stores like Loblaws, Metro and Costco is good news for the long-term forecast of the new plant, although not entirely unsurprising given the resources that parent company Andriani is putting behind it. Andriani invested approximately $55 million to build the 61,225-square-foot production facility on Innovation Drive, and the company also says it is still on track with plans to staff up to 40 employees, with 28 workers on the job at the plant right now. As for their claims it will grow the entire pasta market in Canada, we’ll have to wait and see. Food is in a bit of a weird moment right now — protein, anyone? — but there’s definitely momentum behind natural foods and products high in things like fibre or other nutrients. Read more: Andriani | | | Former Accuride workers win $4.7-million pension fight Workers at the former Accuride plant that closed in 2025 are in for a major payout after their union won a court battle awarding them a $4.7-million pension settlement this week. The union had taken Accuride to court, arguing that the pension surplus that remained when the company closed down the plant (initially estimated to be around $2.8 million, but later discovered to be closer to $4.7 million) belonged to the laid-off workers, not the company. This week, the courts agreed, awarding the entire surplus to the 300 to 400 workers enrolled in the pension. “This is an excellent victory for our workers,” said Luis Domingues, direct of Unifor for the London region, speaking to The London Free Press. “The company initially wanted to cut a deal, but we read the (contract) language. I’m not a lawyer but I’ve been doing this a long time. The language gave members maximum pension amounts. We kept pushing.” After legal fees, the workers will divvy up around $4.1 million, and the union believes there could be more settlement money to come, as there are still outstanding issues related to vacation and severance pay. “This is huge for the families. They will be well compensated,” Domingues said. The upshot: It’s been a pretty dour year for a lot of manufacturing workers in the region, so a win is a welcome change in tone. The attempt by Accuride, and its private equity owners, Crestview Partners, to extract that pension surplus had left a sour taste in many of the laid-off workers’ mouths. “Where the hell did that surplus come from, other than the people that were working there paying into it?” asked Pat Murphy, who had worked at Accuride for over 40 years, in an interview with CTV News London. This is a fight Unifor has waged before — in 2014, they went to the Supreme Court in a dispute over a $43-million pension surplus at the Manitoba Telephone System that reached back to 1997. Parliament has recently made some efforts to clean up the law as it relates to pensions in bankruptcy cases; in 2023, it passed Bill C-228 with cross-party support, which will place workers and retirees in a priority position in bankruptcy cases, particularly where deficits exist. It’s not an exact parallel, but it does suggest the messiness that often pops up in pension cases like this is something that many would like to see avoided. For now, Unifor and the former Accuride workers are celebrating. “We knew this fight would be expensive and difficult, but we weren’t going to let Accuride walk away with money that belonged to our members,” said Unifor Local 27 president Brian Chapman. “This victory shows what a strong union can do when it’s willing to invest its resources to defend workers, even after a plant closure.” Read more: London Free Press | CTV News London | | | Like the weather, city’s spring real estate market stays chilly According to the London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR), which released data for home sales in the month of April this week, a total of 638 homes exchanged hands in the region (the LSTAR catchment area also takes in Strathroy, St. Thomas and portions of Middlesex and Elgin counties), a 6.6 per cent dropped when compared to sales in April of 2025. On the supply side, a total of 1,772 new properties entered the market in April, bringing active listings (a total of all listing) for the month to 3,175, an 11.8 per cent hike from April 2025. “Inventory remains at a historically high level, with five months of inventory recorded in April,” said Robin Tiller, LSTAR’s 2026 chair. “There are plenty of options for prospective buyers, and this is reflected in the sales-to-new-listings ratio, which was 36 per cent.” The sales-to-new-listings ratio =is used to measure the balance of supply and demand in a housing market, with higher percentages above 60 per cent generally indicating a seller’s market and lower percentages below 40 per cent showing a buyer’s market. Upshot: Well into the spring market, there’s no indication things are improving for area realtors. Economic struggles, a rising unemployment rate, the ongoing trade war and continuing conflict in the Middle East will likely see would-be buyers and sellers continue to hunker down for the foreseeable future. And all of this has everyone watching prices closely, wondering if supply-and-demand economics will bring further price declines, which it did last month. The average sale price in April was $618,665, down from the previous month, which was $627,112. Read more: LSTAR | | | Fanshawe announces more cuts with an eye on the light at the end of the deficit reduction tunnel Fanshawe College held a summer town hall this week, and if you can believe it, more job cuts are on the way. The college says it needs to cut 60 more positions by the end of August to hit its target of eliminating 500 full-time positions and said the cuts will be made across administration, support staff and faculty positions. The silver lining? It looks like the cycle of cuts appears to be winding down. Fanshawe president Peter Devlin said the school has brought its projected deficit down to just $10.9 million (from over $50 million earlier this year), and that with the help of more government funding, the school predicts that it will be back in a modest surplus position by the 2028-29 school year. The upshot: Any sign that the relentless pace of job and program is coming to an end will be welcome news, as calling it a very tough year for Fanshawe would be putting it mildly. Adam Rayfield, president of OPSEU Local 109, which represents support staff, offered some praise — albeit dry and limited — for the college’s transparency, saying “When I hear from my colleagues provincewide, I can identify that the information shared at Fanshawe College and the transparency around that, and the advance notice, outstrips what many colleges are experiencing. So, I’d acknowledge that and my appreciation for that.” While news that the college is stabilizing is certainly positive, there’s still tough work ahead. Only time will tell whether stabilization here means the college is setting itself up for a genuine recovery over the next decade and beyond, and whether some of the program cuts can eventually be reversed, or whether this is more of a case of there being nothing left to easily reduce. Devlin was optimistic in his words to staff on this point, offering his hopes that what comes out the other end is a “transformed Fanshawe College that will service Southwestern Ontario.” Read more: CTV News London | | | Housing construction in limbo as questions remain about DC reductions Local homebuilders are putting some projects in a holding pattern as they await more details about plans from higher levels of government to cut development charges (DCs), the city’s planning manager told a committee this week. “Since the federal and provincial announcement on March 30, related to the potential lowering of development charges, there is a hesitant for applicants to actually want to have their permit issued,” Scott Mathers told the planning committee. Since development charges are assessed at the same time the permit is issued, most will want to delay that issuance until after the program materializes. “There’s just a fear that they might lose out on that reduction of the development charges,” Mathers said. The problem with that is that London still has permit targets that it would very much like to hit this year. “We have some targets that we have to hit in September to receive another $20 million from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund,” said planning chair Councillor Steve Lehman, who said he has “flagged this personally several times to CMHC because this is the most critical time for us to get those permits across the finish line.” To put some numbers to this, permits issued in the first quarter of this year were down by 5.4 per cent, while permits in process are down by 18.9 per cent, according to a city staff report. The upshot: A lot of hopes were rightfully raised when the federal government announced plans to devise a program to cut development charges, but the relative silence since then on what that will actually look like, and what kind of room cities will actually have to cut the charges, appears to be having the unintended consequence of slowing the pace of homebuilding. Now, they’re getting a public “hurry up, please” from Councillor Lehman and the planning committee. This week, Robin Tiller (chair of the London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors) and Jared Zaifman (CEO of the London Home Builders’ Association) made a renewed pitch for DC relief, writing in a Free Press op-ed, “By seriously considering ideas like the mayor’s incentive program and the recommendations from the Ontario Real Estate Association” — which wants to see reforms like a more transparent development charge billing model and tax exemptions — “we can cut costs, get more homes built, support local jobs and ensure London remains a place where Ontarians can live, work and grow.” The devil is in the details with that, though — the problem isn’t that anyone desperately wants to keep development charges, it’s that politically there’s a desire to make sure DC savings actually go to homebuyers, which was what scuttled the mayor’s proposal in the first place. The federal and provincial government plan to cut development charges should help on this front, but it can’t do that until it is fleshed out with concrete details. Read more: CTV News London | London Free Press | | | CAMI Assembly Plant workers fill hall for update on fight for jobs Laid-off auto workers at the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll are still awaiting news about the future of the plant, as bad news continues to roll in for Canada’s auto sector. Last Friday, at a town hall hosted by Unifor executives, workers at the plant were told by Unifor national president Lana Payne (pictured) she was “confident about one thing — we’re going to continue to built cars here at CAMI in Ingersoll,” and the union said it is “escalating” pressure on General Motors and the federal and provincial governments to secure a new deal for the plant. What that might look like, however, remains an unanswered question. “This membership is capable of building anything GM puts in front of it,” said CAMI plant chair Mark Gee. “GM just needs to give us the opportunity. It’s time for GM to invest in our plant and get our members back to work.” There is still no timeline or clear path back to work at the plant, though, and it’s not entirely clear GM or the government is in much of a rush to settle on something. Even so, Unifor executives are striking an optimistic, or maybe hopeful, tone. “This plant is too successful, too well-positioned and its workforce too skilled for GM to let it wither away. There is so much potential here,” said Payne. “Our union will not accept anything less than vehicle assembly brought back into this plant.” The upshot: The town hall was held last Friday, just a few days before news broke that Honda is likely to halt its $15-billion investment in a new EV plant in Alliston, an announcement that doesn’t directly impact the GM plant, but certainly casts even more of a pall over the whole auto sector. That aside, there was some good news for auto workers in Ontario over the past week — General Motors Canada is investing $691 million in its St. Catharines Propulsion Plant to support production of its sixth generation V8 engine, which will power GM’s high-demand full-size trucks and SUVs. And the federal government said it plans to give Ford $464.5 million to support the retooling of its Oakville plant, where it is pivoting from a prior plan to produce EVs to make the highly profitable gas- and diesel-powered F-250, F-350 and F-450 Super Duty trucks, which are in high demand in the United States (although current gas prices may put some damper on that). CAMI workers will probably be looking at that deal and wondering when it will be their turn, but for now, everyone’s still playing the waiting game. Read more: Unifor | | | Dispatch: May 8, 2026 A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week. View listings here | | | | |