March 25 - A UK food packaging plant is to shut with the loss of 62 jobs following a slump in orders from chocolate and bakery manufacturers.
Anson Packaging has taken the decision to close down its factory in Wrexham, North Wales, just 12 months after it bought out previous owners EP Packaging, rescuing the operation from bankruptcy.
The plant has been operating since 1993 making thermo-formed plastic trays for the bakery and confectionery industries.
Workers were notified last month that the factory could close unless orders improved. It is understood that Anson has now issued redundancy notices to all its employees following a period of consultation. The company may also be gearing up to shed further jobs at two other sites in the south of England.
Production manager John Roden said: "It's a sad blow. One or two people may have the opportunity of transferring to one of our two other factories, at Haddenham and Sutton in Cambridgeshire, but they are undergoing their own restructuring at the moment and there could be some redundancies there too."
The news comes as the chairman of Germany’s cocoa trade association said thousands of tonnes of cocoa stock are currently piling up in Europe as the economic recession hits sales of chocolates.
Andreas Christiansen said individual chocolate products are seeing volume sales declines reaching 10%. He added that some Polish and Hungarian chocolate producers were seeing a sales slump of up to 50%.
"There are large volumes of unsold cocoa products in Europe," said Christiansen. "The warehouses are full, we estimate that we have unsold inventories of cocoa products, that is mainly cocoa butter and cocoa mass, of about 70,000 tonnes in Europe. Unsold inventories held as a buffer are normally around 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes."