A FACE-mask producer that constructed a brand new manufacturing unit with a £4.8 million taxpayer grant is closing it down.
Alpha Solway, whose state-of-the-art facility in Dumfries solely started manufacturing in Might, had stated the location was a “key half” of the agency’s plans and would create 300 native jobs.
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However yesterday it revealed 65 jobs have been being axed on account of NHS orders for face masks drying up.
We advised final month how employees have been knowledgeable of plans for redundancies.
Final evening one stated: “Employees turned up this morning and have been met by the administrators at 8am and advised that’s it, it’s over.
“It’s come as a shock.
“We have been engaged on information merchandise and it regarded like issues would possibly flip round.
“The best way workers have been handled is disgusting, on the web site that received the Authorities cash they’re maintaining two folks on and we predict it’s in order that they don’t have to present the cash again.”
In April, SNP Enterprise Minister Ivan McKee visited the £12 million manufacturing unit, in Gilnockie Enterprise Park, ten months after the corporate was awarded a £4.8 million funding package deal from quango South of Scotland Enterprise to assist to construct it.
Mr McKee stated on the time that the deal demonstrated the Scottish Authorities’s “dedication to safe the long-term future of producing in Scotland”.
However final evening Alpha Solway director Steven Binnie stated the partnership with SOSE had been “made on the idea of ongoing orders”.
Alpha Solway Director Steven Binnie stated: “Our response to the Covid-19 pandemic centered on delivering a resilient and dependable provide of PPE for NHS workers.
“Sadly, these orders have stopped in latest months with important monetary influence.
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“Following the evaluation we introduced final month we’re due to this fact taking the tough choice to consolidate our manufacturing capability and shut one in all these websites.
“Machines from the Dumfries facility might be transferred to be used at different websites and whereas general capability might be lowered, we’ll retain important manufacturing functionality.”
The manufacturing unit makes melt-blown polypropylene, the virus filtering materials utilized in Alpha Solway’s high-grade FFP2 and IIR facemasks.
Alpha Solway, which is a part of the Globus Group, is without doubt one of the largest non-public sector employers within the south of Scotland and produces one billion medical masks and 300 million FFP respirators per 12 months.
Enterprise company SOSE beforehand hailed its £4.8 million funding in Alpha Solway as one in all its “success tales”, saying it will “create and maintain many new jobs within the area”.
South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth referred to as on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to urgently examine the Authorities’s method to the acquisition of PPE and the stopping of NHS orders; “in order that we are able to keep away from any additional job losses at Alpha Solway and be sure that we’ve got the important future PPE resilience that we want.”
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