A manufacturing plant has been forced to shed six jobs after losing just one customer.

Shep Plastics, in the Old Pottery, Lower Dicker, near Hailsham, made and dispatched pet care products for a firm which has instead decided to use a factory in Latvia at a fraction of the cost.

The business accounted for almost 20 per cent of Shep's turnover and the company has been forced to make up the shortfall through redundancies.

Shep Plastics chairman Malcolm Bradshaw said British firms were unable to compete with rivals in the European Union because the manufacturing industry was mired in Government bureaucracy.

He said: "We have a great team here at Shep Plastics and it is a sad and immensely difficult decision to make six people redundant.

"However, there is no way we can compete on price with the new EU states, especially since our government seems intent on placing new burdens on UK manufacturing on an almost daily basis."

Last year Mr Bradshaw wrote to the Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, raising his concerns.

Set up in 1974, Shep Plastics has made a range of plastic products, including pet feeders and till trays and today employs almost 70 people.

However, it is operating in an industry under growing threat from the low-cost economies overseas.

Mr Bradshaw said the unnamed customer had notified his company months before that it had decided to have the manufacturing done in Latvia.

He said: "The customer concerned gave us six months' notice they intended to take manufacturing to Latvia.

"We obviously cannot compete with that. Over there, wage levels are somewhere in the region of ten per cent what we pay here.

"In addition, companies there haven't got the same obligations we have here for health and safety and environmental control.

"There were 21 people here at Shep Plastics who worked on that project.

"We managed to re-deploy 15 of them but unfortunately the other six had to go."

But Shep Plastics were yesterday buoyed by winning new business - but work will not fully kick in until mid-summer.

The company has taken delivery of a suite of seven new tools on behalf of one its major customers and will produce items destined for the commercial hygiene sector.

Technical services director Lyn Rennie said initial reaction to their samples has been positive, with the customer calling them the best first-offs he has seen.

Mrs Rennie said: "Losing work is never easy to take but Shep Plastics is not in the business of buying business.

"In order to prosper we shall continue to seek new suppliers and partners to make sure our customers get what they want, when they want it."