Geest ready meals plant closure threatens 140 jobs

Up to 140 staff at Geest’s ready meals plant in West Marsh Road, Spalding, face redundancy following moves by the company to transfer production to more modern facilities.

Although Geest’s ready meals business is performing well, the West Marsh Road plant is too old and inflexible to warrant the investment required to ensure it stays at the cutting edge of ready meals manufacture, said a spokeswoman.

“The West Marsh Road plant is an old site and is just not conducive to handling high volume lines. It’s not cost effective and the production flow isn’t great.”

Production will be gradually transferred to other sites, chiefly Geest’s nearby Sutton Bridge ready meals plant, which only opened in 1999 and has benefited from significant investment in recent months, she added.

Consultation with the 450 staff at the plant started last year, with more than 200 positions going through natural wastage, voluntary redundancies and redeployment at other Geest plants, she said.

“We’re doing everything we can to help people. We’ve set up a job room on the site and our HR team is trawling through local press and websites trying to find alternative employment opportunities for people.”

The site is likely to close by the end of April, said a spokesman for the Transport & General Workers’ Union. He added: “Geest has made every effort to reduce the number of forced redundancies.”

The closure follows a recent move to axe 17 jobs at the company’s Welland Fresh Foods factory, also in Spalding, as part of an efficiency drive following the £485m takeover of Geest by Icelandic firm Bakkavör last year.

The combined business is now the UK’s largest chilled food manufacturer with sales topping £1bn.

Further details of savings through better buying, shared development, cross selling opportunities and logistical synergies will be revealed on February 28 when Bakkavör (UK) publishes its full year results.