Up to 50 jobs are to be lost at the Allan Brothers subsidiary of Palgrave Brown, after a review of production procedures identified ‘several areas for productivity improvement and cost saving’.
The Berwick-based manufacturer of high performance joinery products, bought by Palgrave Brown at the end of 1999, employs around 200 people.
Richard Fawcett, managing director of Palgrave Brown, explained: ‘Over the last few years, new manufacturing procedures have been introduced to improve productivity; unfortunately, staffing levels have not been adjusted accordingly.’
The company was consulting Allan Brothers’ employees and their representatives ‘with the aim of minimising job losses’.
Mr Fawcett added: ‘It is very much our hope that the final number of redundancies will be substantially fewer than 50.’
No timescale for the redundancies taking effect has yet been announced.
Mr Fawcett, who last month confirmed Palgrave Brown was on target to achieve a £100m turnover before 2003 (TTJ February 24), pointed out that Allan Brothers’ sales had improved 14% year on year and that the company was ‘very much holding its market position’.
