About 70 employees at Northern Ireland panel manufacturer Spanboard Products Ltd have been lost following the end of production of raw chipboard at the Coleraine plant. The redundancies follow a 90-day consulation period (ttjonline.com January 22).
Spanboard, sister company of Sonae UK Ltd will now concentrate on value added services and all its chipboard production will be switched to Sonae’s Knowsley site.
“It is important to stress that the changes won’t affect our existing customers in Ireland,” said a spokesperson at the time. “The commercial operation isn’t changing and we will still be offering our full product range.”
The company’s Portuguese owner, Sonae Industria, blamed the job losses on the downturn in the construction industry and the rising cost of raw materials.
