A FURTHER jobs blow for Bolton has been announced with the news that 43 workers at Beloit Walmsley are to be made redundant.

Conveyor and drive belt manufacturers Charles Walker has also announced that it is to shut its Bolton factory and transfer operations to its Yorkshire plant.

A downturn in the worldwide market has been blamed for the job losses at Beloit Walmsley, which manufactures paper making machinery.

The 570-strong workforce at the Crompton Way site were given the bad news at the end of last week.

redundancies will affect the research and development departments and the fitting shop. Management could give no assurances that more jobs losses will not follow if the paper making industry does not pick up.

After consultations with the unions, the latest round of job losses are expected to go in early March.

Beloit Walmsley's personnel manager, Jacqueline Johnson, told the BEN: "We are in a global restructuring situation. That, coupled with a low workload at the moment, has unfortunately led us to downsize.

"It is very unfortunate that the paper industry world wide is in recession."

She added: "Hopefully we don't have to make any more people redundant. We need to be ready for the upturn when it comes."

Charles Walker, which employs 13 people and is based at Kent Road in Bolton, says sales have been badly hit by economic conditions.

Charles Walker exports about 40pc of its products and spokesman Peter Cowey says the poor state of the economy in the Far East, plus the strength of the pound and bad transport links between Bolton and its factory in Bingley have led them to decide to close the Bolton plant gradually over the next three to six months.

Blows

It is not yet known how many redundancies will result.

The news is the latest in a series of job blows for Bolton in recent days.

Last week the BEN reported how 220 jobs were to go in the textile industry with the closure of Star Vale Ltd in Horwich and redundancies at Coats Viyella factories.

Then shopping giants Littlewoods axed 378 jobs at its distribution centres on Blackburn Road and Deane Church Lane, and went on to confirm a further 199 job cuts and the shutdown of its Blackrod depot.

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