Antrim electronics firm to lay off 200 people
Around 200 jobs were today set to be lost at a Northern Ireland electronics company.
American owned Solectron, based at Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, issued 90-day protective notices to its entire 230-strong workforce just 18 months after setting up in the province.
The company is understood to be planning to close the plant down and transfer a small number of remaining workers to the site of a sister company, Systems Solutions, also based in Carrickfergus.
That facility, which only opened last year, is also expected to see up to 30 redundancies announced in the near future.
Solectron said it had suffered a ‘‘particularly difficult operating period’’ and blamed a ‘‘significant downturn in global business’’.
The changing economic conditions and customer demand meant its plant was no longer viable.
The company employs a further 500 people at a plant in Derry and more in Galway.
It also has plants in Scotland, Germany, France, Turkey, Sweden, Romania and the Netherlands.
Solectron said in a statement: ‘‘The Carrickfergus site has been unprofitable for more than a year with no improvement prospect, making it no longer viable for manufacturing operations.’’
It said it was entering into a consultation process and had invited the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union and members of its workforce to elect a consultative committee to determine ‘‘an appropriate course of action at the site as it addresses the impact of changing economic conditions and resulting changes in customer demand’’.
The company, the world’s leading supply-chain facilitator, provides a full range of manufacturing and management services to leading hi-tech electronics companies around the world.
The Carrickfergus plant is the latest victim of the troubled technology company Nortel, for whose Northern Ireland plant it makes circuit boards, and which have led to more than 1,000 job losses in Northern Ireland.
Solectron established a presence in Northern Ireland in July 2000, as part of a global outsourcing contract, with a workforce of 135 which rose rapidly to the current 230.
