Manchester label manufacturer McBride set to cut 400 jobs

Manchester label-manufacturer for cleaning products, McBride, has started consultations over 400 of its 1,600 posts at factories in Hull, Barrow, Bradford and Middleton in Greater Manchester.

This is apparently in response to a deterioration in the retail environment in UK, necessitating a wide-ranging strategic review of its UK business.

The group is reporting a restructure of their activities, including the removal of ‘un-profitable business’ and reducing capacity in the UK in order to improve profitability.

Savings of around £12 million are expected to be delivered in full by June 2016 with around £3 million benefitting FY15. Associated cash implementation costs are expected to be around £14 million.

It is expected that, of a workforce of 1,600 in the UK business, around 400 positions are expected to be made redundant. Consultation with affected employee groups will start immediately.

In addition, the Group expects to incur material one-off costs in relation to two matters. The implementation of the European Classification, Labelling and Packaging regulations will lead to exceptional costs of around £4 million as a consequence of the need to re-configure the labelling of almost all the Group’s products.

The Group is also expected to take an exceptional charge of £2.5 million in relation to a long term environmental remediation plan at a site in Belgium.

Chris Bull, group chief executive Officer, commented: “We are announcing a robust plan that will help restore our UK profitability.

“We will exit some business in non-core un-profitable categories, but our capacity to meet growth opportunities in our core categories remains unaffected.

“We will be entering into full and meaningful consultation with colleagues affected by these proposals”.