Food manufacturer to shut factory as tough year continues
The UK’s biggest supplier of supermarket chicken said it will be shutting its Scottish factory, where around 450 people are employed, in August this year.
The announcement by 2 Sisters of the closure of the Cambuslang factory in South Lanarkshire comes after an announcement in February that 900 jobs were at risk as the company considered whether to close another two West Midlands factories in Smethwick and Wolverhampton.
The company has also been the focus of a recent undercover investigation by the Guardian and ITV for food safety breaches, which led to production to be suspended for five weeks at the company’s West Bromwich plant.
2 Sisters said in a statement it will try to keep the number of compulsory redundancies to a minimum.
“This is not a decision we take lightly. Since day one, we have been very open on the big challenges the factory faces.
“In fact, we have been trying extremely hard to reverse the position for a considerable period of time. We have invested several million pounds since 2014 and expanded by taking on more people, yet it is still a heavily lossmaking operation.
“We have tried every turnaround option available to us for several years, ranging from cost-reduction measures to an attempt to grow the business organically. It has made little difference.”
