An award-winning Dumfries PPE manufacturing company that used a £4.8 million taxpayer grant to help build a state-of-the-art factory has announced it is to make 65 staff redundant.
Alpha Solway director Steven Binnie said yesterday the decision to shut the plant at Irongray Industrial Estate - built in a matter of weeks at the start of the Covid pandemic - was made to “protect the company and its remaining team against continued deterioration”.
The £12 million state-of-the-art facility at Heathhall, which only began production in May, will remain open.
The company, which is part of the Globus group and also has a site in Annan, had previously secured £4.8 million of funding support from South of Scotland Enterprise for the venture.
Alpha Solway expanded after winning government contracts to provide personal protective equipment to the NHS during the Covid crisis.
But that work has now dried up. Director Steven Binnie said: “Our response to the Covid-19 pandemic focused on delivering a resilient and reliable supply of PPE for NHS staff. Our investment was made on the basis of ongoing orders which would provide long-term resilience of supply in the UK. Unfortunately, these orders have stopped in recent months with significant financial impact.
“Following the review we announced last month we are therefore taking the difficult decision to consolidate our manufacturing capacity and close one of these sites. We are very thankful for the hard work done by our colleagues over the last two years to deliver millions of masks to NHS staff when they were desperately needed. This decision has been taken to stem significant losses which have been sustained for many months. As with any business it is necessary to protect the company and its remaining team against continued deterioration.”
He said added: “Our other site in Dumfries, built with support from South of Scotland Enterprise, will remain open and will continue to look for a market for its raw material production as well as supporting our remaining sites.”
South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth described the loss of the jobs as a “huge blow” and said his thoughts are with everyone who works at the factory, “even more so as the cost of living crisis is starting to hit every family”.
He added: “Just last year, Scottish Government funding of £4.8 million was awarded to Alpha Solway to build a manufacturing plant in Dumfries for personal protective equipment, with a promise from ministers of 300 jobs.
“Something has seriously gone wrong with the company’s business plan and sadly it is workers who are paying the price.
“The firm argue that NHS orders have been stopped and while we all understand that the overall amount of PPE that we need has reduced, surely one of the lessons from the pandemic is that we should never again rely on importing PPE; it should be manufactured in Scotland. It is unclear to me where the public sector is buying their supplies of PPE and that’s an issue I’m trying it get to the bottom of.
“In my view every single item of PPE we use should be manufactured here in the UK where we can better secure supplies if, and when, it is needed. It is also madness from an environmental point of view to rely on importing PPE from the other side of world when we could be making that product here in Scotland.”
