A COMPANY chief has hit back at "doom and gloom" predictions for Leigh's once flourishing cable-making industry.

Brand-rex production manager Bill Keaveny says cable production is alive and well in Leigh.

The cable making industry in the town was hit by a massive blow in September when it was announced 130 jobs were to be lost at BICC General - as reported in The Journal.

But Mr Keaveny told The Journal this week that his order books are still full and believes that fears of more job losses are unfounded.

New contracts with major car producers to supply cabling for vehicles such as catalytic convertor cabling means that for those still in work, it will not be such a bleak Christmas.

However at BICC General the job losses will leave a workforce of just 40 people by the end of year, reducing the West Bridgewater Street site, once an employer 3,000 people, to a shadow of its former self.

Mr Keaveny said his company, located on the same site, had weathered the storms which had sunk other firms and is now booming.

"Over the last few years cable-making as a whole has been shrinking but Brand-rex has actually been growing. We employ between 185 and 200 workers."

Mr Keaveny said over the last few years there has been considerable investment in the business.

"Brand-rex, today is high tech and high performance. We have gone into the auto motive side in a major way and the aerospace industry. We're doing cables in airbus wings.

"We're making cables in a variety of different fields. For example we do gas ignition leads for cookers and boilers and we do land cables and area network cables for computers. We even do catalytic convertor cables for cars."

He maintains cable-making is a thriving industry and claimed Brand-rex was Leigh's biggest employer.

"People think cable-making is dead - but we want to let them know that it's thriving."

BICC General has been taken over by Pirelli Cables Ltd, an Italian International company based in Milan.

The last cable will be made at BICC General in January although the vast majority of the work force in the cable making department will finish work before the end of this year.

The new company said that a small team of 40 employees will be left at the Leigh site to work on special compounds, to make the materials needed to cover cables.