Midfield Meat staff are anxiously awaiting updates to discover whether the abattoir will shut for six weeks because of government-imposed coronavirus restrictions.
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General manager Dean McKenna said on Friday that it looked like Midfield would close due to new government guidelines that cut their operations by a third.
He said management had been in discussions with various government departments and had their "fingers crossed that we can find a resolution to this massive problem for our region on Friday, Saturday or Sunday."
Mr McKenna told The Standard on Sunday that management was "still trying to reconfigure how we can operate the abattoirs going forward".
"We will not be working at full capacity because of the restrictions," he said.
"We will have a clearer idea on Monday morning and are still in discussions with the state departments."
A full shut down would see about 1000 Warrnambool people out of work for six weeks.
"The impact it would have on the local economy would be massive as it relates to around $10 million in wages," Mr McKenna said on Friday.
Premier Daniel Andrews said that under new COVID-19 rules, the city's largest employer would have to cut its operations by a third from Thursday as stage 3 lockdowns came into force in regional Victoria.
The measure - that was placed on all of the state's abattoirs - was described as "disastrous" and would have meant cutting 340 jobs at Midfield Meat.
The blow to the company's operations comes after it tested its entire workforce last month to ensure all workers were COVID-19 free.
Despite all workers testing negative after an infected inspector had visited the site, the abattoir was still being forced by the government to scale back.
Meat processing facilities have been the source of several Victorian COVID-19 outbreaks, a cluster at Colac.
Victoria recorded 394 new cases of coronavirus yesterday and 17 deaths.
There are no cases in Warrnambool.
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