Twinings to take the tea out of Britain?
By Phillip Hogan
December 4th, 2009Posted in Tea in the News
Angry workers will swarm into London today to lobby shareholders of the profitable tea company Twinings, in a bid to save their livelihood.
Plans were announced earlier this month to cease production at Twinings’ North Shields plant, with the loss of 263 jobs, making their other plant in Andover the centre for UK packing and distribution. Further redundancies are also on the cards as plans to modernize UK distribution sees increased automation at the plant in Andover, possibly costing a further 129 jobs.
‘It is shameful that a profitable company with an up-market reputation like Twinings could contemplate sacking the bulk of its UK workforce in order to exploit cheap labour’, Derek Kotz, head of the support group which hopes to counter the redundancies, stated earlier this month.
Twinings, as a company, has had a long and rich history within the UK. Founded in 1706, Thomas Twining opened his first shop on the Strand to huge success. Over 300 years later Twinings’ profits continue to soar as Associated British Foods (ABF), Twinings’ parent company, announced a 4% rise in annual profits, with sales also increasing to £9.3 billion.
But what do these changes mean for tea drinkers in the UK? Not much, according to Twinings’ international supply director Marcus Cotter-Stone. According to Cotter-Stone, only tea produced within the UK will be distributed and sold within Britain.
‘As two-thirds of our sales are overseas, we need to locate our manufacturing operations in cost-effective locations, closer to markets’, Cotter-Stone also stated last month that ‘the Andover plant will take over production for the UK market because it has the capacity to support the long-term growth of Twinings’ business in the UK’.
Hoping to improve efficiency, Twinings will move the vast majority of its production over to Poland and China.
But with the nation already under severe financial strain, as well as unemployment increasing, a serious concern has risen over the potential impact these job losses might have on the local economies of North Shields and Andover, as well as the UK manufacturing industry as a whole.
The issue even seems to have reached the ears of some MPs with Labour MP John McDonnel, as well as other Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, forwarding a motion at the House of Commons aimed at countering the redundancy plans, which are believed to take effect in 2011.
For more information, or if you wish to view Mr McDonnel’s EDM 200 petition, please follow the links below.
Early-day motion petition: http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39740&SESSION=903
Andover support group: support@savetwiningsjobs.co.uk
Contact Phillip Hogan at phil@allabouttea.co.uk
Read other articles by Phillip Hogan
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