350 jobs go at foundry

Metal bashing firm Castings has axed 350 staff – around a third of its workforce, it was revealed today.

The Black Country firm has already seen production slashed by 60 per cent over the past year.

Profits have plunged from £16.7 million to just £3.6m.

Today Brian Cooke, chairman of the Brownhills-based company, launched a stinging attack on the Government for failing to help manufacturing workers during the recession.

He said: "It is particularly sad that many long serving employees have had to leave the company. All our employees have worked hard over the past years and, through no fault of their own, some now find themselves out of work.

"It would surely have been cheaper for the Government to fund temporary short time working rather than increasing unemployment.

"The unavoidable cost of the redundancies has been £2.2m."

He said the slump in production had now stabilised at around 40 per cent of previous levels.

The Lichfield Road firm, which had employed 1,100 at two sites in Brownhills and Derbyshire before the job cuts, has also had to set aside more than £3.8m against possible losses on money deposited with four Icelandic banks.

This has been reduced from £5.7m after administrators of Heritable Bank and Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander told Castings it would recover some of its money.

Castings had also paid for its electricity for months in advance, paying for the supply last July before the slump, adding to its costs.

Mr Cooke said: "We had to sell excess electricity back into the market at a loss of £2.2m."

Revenue fell by 13 per cent to £85 million across the group, which includes the Castings business and components firm CNC Speedwell in Brownhills.