Kidderminster, England, March 27, 2006--Victoria Carpets--one of the oldest carpet producers in Kidderminster--will close its dye house next month, eliminating 18 jobs, according to the Express & Star.
Redundancy costs are expected to be in the region of £175,000 and the facility is expected to close within two weeks.
And Cradley Print in Cradley Heath near Halesowen could lose scores of jobs when the company sells its site to its own directors' pension fund.
The sale and lease-back of the site in Chester Road will help pay the £600,000 bill to pay for redundancies from the workforce over the next six months due to major losses.
Victoria Carpets will close the facility at its Worcester Road complex because it says it is no longer profitable to dye yarn after the firm ceased to produce Axminster last year.
Hundreds of jobs have been lost in recent years as the carpet industry struggles to compete with the rest of the world's producers.
The dye house was moved to the site from the old Green Street premises during relocation in 1999.
Some of the staff have been working in the facility all their lives, but managers say there is not enough demand for dyed yarns to make it profitable. Instead yarn used at the Kidderminster firm will be treated at a dyehouse in Yorkshire.
The Victoria Carpets hank dye house was used to prepare the yarn for carpets like Axminster. But after Axminster ceased production last February only five per cent of yarns were being dyed.
Group managing director Alan Bullock said: "It is quite sad that we have to close the dye house because many staff had worked there for 30 or 40 years."
