MAJOR job cuts are being made at a Blackburn paper mill less than two years after a huge investment.

Workers at Sappi Europe's Blackburn mill have been told around 75 jobs will have to go in a major streamlining operation.

The news comes just two years after a £40million investment in the Feniscowles plant to enable it to produce a specialist high quality coated paper.

The firm has blamed the cuts on the "poor financial performance" of the mill.

All areas of the mill, which employs around 250, will be affected by the cuts.

"We understand the effect of our decisions to streamline the operations on our people and they will be carefully considered," said mill director Jan Willem Merkx who took up his job at the site 10 weeks ago.

"We are confident that only by taking such drastic steps to turn the business around we can secure the long term success of Blackburn mill."

As well as job cuts new working conditions will be introduced at the mill, one of two producers of coated woodfree paper in the UK.

No-one from the Graphical Paper & Media Union, which represents employees at the site, was available for comment.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.