Tulip in line for £2.7m to re-open factory

MEAT processing business Tulip is in line for public subsidies worth £2.7m to help it re-open a factory it shut down earlier in the year.

Tulip plans to spend £12m revamping its Wirral factory and changing its focus from sliced meats to sausages.

Around £1.9m of this cash will come from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) which occasionally grants subisidies to encourage inward investment. In this case it said it had helped fill a funding gap.

A further £800,000 will come from Wirral Council from its Working Neighbourhoods budget which seeks to tackle unemployment. Final approval is still being sought from council chiefs.

The financial details have been disclosed by both public bodies but Tulip initially resisted publication of the amount claiming it was commercially sensitive.

The business has qualified for the cash because it is promising to create 270 jobs at the Bromborough factory. However, in May it made all 300 staff redundant after saying the plant was no longer viable and moving production to other locations.

A spokesman for the firm, which is owned by the Denmark-based multinational Danish crown, said the award would stop the work from going to the Continent.

He added: “The decision to change the use of the factory could only be made after a full feasibility study had taken place and any necessary planning applications had been approved.

“The option to change use of the facility was not available to us at the time of the closure. There is a also a substantial amount of development work to be done that simply could not have taken place while the site was still operational.”

NWDA chairman Robert Hough and Wirral Council leader Steve Foulkes celebrated Tulip’s move as a boost to the Wirral. Production is expected to start within the first half of 2010.

Danish Crown reported net profits of £122m, down 19%, on sales of £5.7bn in the year to September 2008.