Following its proposal to close its Bury St Edmunds and Coalville sites back in September Pilgrim’s UK has confirmed they are now both to shut down in a phased process.
In a statement the company said: "Following the conclusion of collective and one-to-one consultations, Pilgrim’s UK has made the decision to implement the proposals to close our Bury St Edmunds and Coalville manufacturing sites. This will be a phased process while the transfer of products to alternative Pilgrim’s UK sites takes place.
"We would like to thank all of those involved in the process, for their outstanding professionalism and high-quality levels of service maintained during what we recognise has been a challenging time.
"We are working closely with colleagues at risk of redundancy, providing them with support and guidance, including details of alternative opportunities within the Pilgrim’s UK network."
In its statement, back in September, the processor had warned that, over the last 18-months, the UK pig sector had faced “the most challenging time in its history” due to a combination of significant increases in production costs, falling pig prices across Europe and the UK, a decline in demand, labour shortages and the restrictions on the ability to export from some sites into key overseas markets.
The UK business recorded a loss of £16 million for the year to 26th December 2021, according to its latest annual report.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
