BLACKBURN MP Jack Straw will lobby the New York bosses of a CD factory in a bid to save it from closure.

EDC announced this week that it was moving its production from the factory in Whitebirk, Blackburn, to another plant in Hanover, Germany, at the end of the year.

The move will lead to the loss of 260 jobs at the CD and DVD manufacturer.

But Mr Straw, who met with bosses of the firm at the Philips Road site yesterday, said he would encourage them to reconsider the proposed switch.

He said: “I’m going to speak to Robert Chapman Jr, the boss of parent company EDCI Holdings, and make the case for keeping production in the UK, especially because of the benefits of the declining pound.

“This is an usual incident because it is more to do with a technology shift rather than with the recession. The music market is pretty stable, but CD sales are declining as people download more and more from the internet.

“Downloading will only increase as broadband connections improve.”

During his visit to the factory, he met with its managing director Andrew Lloyd-Jones and Roger Morgan, EDC’s executive vice president of international operations.

Mr Straw said he had also questioned bosses about the fact that agency workers had been taken on to cope with a recent increase in orders.

He said: “I was told that orders were good but it was measured on a daily basis and that long term they’d had to end a weekend shift because of slump in demand.

”Throughout the 90-day consultation I want to speak to the local authority, as well as the Job Centre, to make sure that as much advice as possible is available to the workforce so they know what their options are.”

EDCI Holdings is based in New York.