LONDON - Imperial Tobacco Group Plc has announced that it plans to close down the Rizla rolling paper factory at Treforest, South Wales resulting in culling 134 jobs in the region. The company said that the Treforest operations would be shifted to its Belgian cigarette papers plant at Wilrijk.
The move would come into effect from next year onwards. This announcement of further job losses follows a similar one that culled 200 jobs at its Berlin plant. Imperial blamed cost-cutting measures for this step saying that the move was a part of a restructuring exercise that aims to save the company around £3 million annually starting from 2007. "This restructuring further underlines our ongoing commitment to enhance productivity improve operational efficiencies and reduce overall costs. However, our immediate focus will be on supporting our employees during this difficult time," said David Cresswell, Director at Imperial Tobacco Group Manufacturing. He added that the highly skilled workforce in Treforest would be given a fair deal to ensure that the loss of the job did not weaken them economically. "We decided to consolidate production at Wilrijk because it is the larger of the two plants and, unlike Treforest, is a site that we completely own, providing greater potential for any future development," Cresswell stated.
The trade unions had been informed of this decision late yesterday and consultations are underway to reach a consensus deal. The Treforest factory's output last year was 23 billion leaves, while the Wilrijk plant produces 30 billion leaves and supports a workforce of 160. Naturally, the job losses have not gone down well in South Wales, "I will be writing to Assembly Ministers asking them to fund a package to help the 134 staff who are losing their jobs. Unfortunately these job losses are part of a trend - recent figures show that Wales lost 6,000 jobs over the past year, with much of that loss in manufacturing," said Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood, AM for South Wales Central.
Posted
on : Sat, 01 Oct 2005 07:35 GMT | Business News
By : Salim Patel
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