Top pig processing firm to cull over 600 jobs
Top pig processing firm to cull over 600 jobs
By Shelley Wright
ONE of the countrys biggest pig and poultry processing firms, Grampian Country Food Group, is to shed more than 600 staff early in the New Year due to the ongoing crisis in the pig sector.
Although a final decision is yet to be taken on which of the firms plants will be affected, redundancies are needed to offset the lack of throughput, says Fred Duncan, group chairman.
"A company like ours cant lose 25% of its production without doing something about it. We need to cut costs by several hundreds of thousands a week." The firm, which has a turnover of more than £1bn, employs over 11,000 staff at sites throughout Britain.
Speaking at a meeting in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Mr Duncan added that Grampians own pig rearing units, capable of supplying 3000 finished pigs a week, had lost £2.8m in the past year.
Even so, the company had decided it would be necessary to increase pig numbers, to offset as much as possible the national drop in pig numbers. "We are processing 13-14,000 pigs a week in Scotland at the moment, but we anticipate that will fall to about 10,000 in the new year," he said. Scotlands national pig herd has contracted by about a third since the market collapsed.
"There was no time in the past year when we would not have been better off buying in legs, bellies and loins rather than slaughtering pigs ourselves. And we may have to consider that next year," added Mr Duncan.
"It has been through loyalty to our producers and to try to maintain supplies for the future that we have continued slaughtering rather than importing."
Andrew Cheale, a director of Britains largest pigmeat exporters, Cheale Meats, said his firm was being offered pig herds for slaughter "left, right and centre". If that continued, he believed, there would be a shortage of domestic pigmeat from early next year.
Jim Walker, president of the Scottish NFU, said the staff reduction at Grampian Country Foods was just one of the knock-on effects of governments refusal to help the pig industry.
"The job losses reflect the disastrous state the industry is in. But it doesnt stop at the processing sector. What will happen to a lot of the poor quality feed wheat, normally fed to intensive livestock, next harvest if we continue to see pig numbers drop?"
Government had been told countless times about the down-stream effects, yet it continued to turn its back on the pig industry, Mr Walker said. *