EAST Lancashire wallpaper and interior-design company Graham & Brown is to halt one of its six wallpaper production machines, affecting 23 jobs.

The firm is to offer them posts elsewhere in its Blackburn headquarters and Padiham distribution base.

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The company is to create 16 new jobs in its Logistics Direct pick-and-pack centre attached to its main Blackburn factory.

Chief executive Andrew Graham said the restructuring followed a fall in volume wallpaper sales and increase in e-commerce trade, partly direct online sales and partly for retail partners. He said that if overall wallpaper trade increased, the machine would be restarted.

The firm employs 530 staff worldwide with almost 400 in Blackburn, 230 of whom work in manufacturing/operations, and around 50 in Padiham.

Mr Graham said the 70-year-old company has had another tough year, although sales had increased since a particularly difficult 2015 which had seen a sharp fall in profits.

He said: “Many of our major retail partners are reviewing the number of physical stores they trade from, and reducing the size of product ranges stocked.

“Previously important international export markets such as Russia, Libya and Egypt, that were challenged through 2015, will continue to be challenged in 2016.

“Wars and economic sanctions continue to negatively affect exchange rates, credit insurance and our ability to trade securely. This has reduced our volume requirement. Our online business supplying the consumer direct via our web partners and through our graham brown.com site showed strong growth in 2015, and we expect this to continue. As a result, we are considering up to 23 redundancies in operations. This involves stopping production on one of our wallpaper machines.

“There are 16 additional positions available in the LD Centre, our pick-and-pack warehouse, which will move to five shifts to meet consumer demand, supporting our growing e-commerce business, as well as some current vacancies. To minimise the need for compulsory redundancies, the company is offering a basic voluntary redundancy programme to all employees."

Blackburn & District Chamber of Trade president Tony Duckworth said: “The company has to adapt to changing market conditions but it is good to see them keeping staff in the town.”

Blackburn with Darwen Council Tory group leader Mike Lee said: “Companies have to change and adapt, as Graham & Brown is doing. Let us hope they can restart the wallpaper machine soon.”