65 jobs threat at East Lancashire firm Express Gifts (From Lancashire Telegraph)

65 jobs threat at East Lancashire firm Express Gifts

4:46pm Thursday 4th March 2010

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SIXTY-five jobs are at risk after a home shopping firm announced it was closing its Accrington site.

Express Gifts said its Marlborough Road warehouse and sample room was to shut.

The firm said the warehouse would be relocated to its Henry Street site in Church.

The buying sample room is being moved to premises in Hutton Street, Furthergate, Blackburn.

It also has a call centre at the junction seven business park at Clayton-le-Moors.

An Express Gifts spokesman said: ”We regret having to make anyone redundant and we shall be doing all we can to keep the number to a minimum.

“This move will enable us to take advantage of the investment we have made at the main site which will ensure we remain competitive in a difficult market.”

The firm said customers were ordering ‘smaller numbers of items at higher prices’ in recent years.

“This means that following a significant amount of new investment being made on one of the lines at the main site at Church, more items will be able to be picked there and the Marlborough Road site will no longer be needed,” the spokesman added.

The firm said additional jobs would be created at the Church site which the 65 staff 'will have priority for'.

“It is anticipated that some redundancies will be necessary”, the firm said. “It is impossible to say at this stage how many.”

The warehouse functions should be relocated by the end of August, and the sample room move may be slightly later, the firm said.

Hyndburn Council leader Peter Britcliffe said: “We have been saying for some weeks that while the recession may have ended in some parts of the country it is still grim up here in the north.

“My thoughts are with these workers.”

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