PERRY, N.Y. (AP) – A cookie factory is eliminating 102 jobs, or about half its work force, in this western New York village.

The workers will be laid off in December, leaving 106 employees here to make other products under the banner of parent company Parmalat .

The Italian parent food company is shifting production of its Archway Cookies brand to a factory in Ashland, Ohio, in an effort to boost productivity, plant officials said in Tuesday’s Daily News of Batavia.

“It’s unfortunate … but from a business position, it’s what companies have to do sometimes,” John Fox Jr., a Parmalat facility manager, told the newspaper.

The company is arranging a severance package for the laid-off employees, who learned of their fate late last week.

Lew-Mark Baking Co. owned the Archway Cookies license for 47 years in New York and New Jersey before selling it to Specialty Foods Corp., a Parmalat subsidiary, in January.