A manufacturing company is to move abroad with the loss of up to 90 jobs.

BOC Edwards has announced plans to relocate one fifth of its Crawley-based workforce.

It is the latest in a series of Sussex firms to offshore jobs to countries where costs are cheaper.

Staff were told yesterday of the decision, which will mainly affect shop-floor workers.

The announcement comes just days after Worthing-based Eurotherm revealed it wants to move hundreds of manufacturing jobs to Eastern Europe.

Union leaders said it was symptomatic of a decline in British industry.

BOC Edwards, which also has sites in Shoreham and Burgess Hill, plans to move its service operations to the Czech Republic and manufacturing of diffusion vacuum pumps to Asia or Europe.

Its remaining activities in Manor Royal, Crawley, including the firm's global headquarters, will remain within the area although no decision has been made on the future of the existing site.

Subject to negotiations, the moves will take place over the next three years, starting in the autumn.

BOC Edwards said every effort would be made to minimise the impact on employees. This would include voluntary redundancy with retraining and help with job-seeking.

It said the move was necessary to deliver continued growth in a competitive market.

BOC Edwards employs nearly 5,000 people in the UK, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, the USA, France and the Czech Republic and more than 50 per cent of its sales are in Asia and Japan.

It employs 1,369 people in Sussex with 427 in Crawley.

European operations director Ian Mackay said the move would not affect its other Sussex sites.

He said: "The intention is to retain in the UK a concentration of high technology manufacturing and technical resources and to invest consistently to maintain our world leading position.

"Our sites in Shoreham and Burgess Hill, for example, are equipped with some of the most advanced manufacturing technology in the world."

Bob Stokes, a senior organiser for the GMB union, said: "Unfortunately, it is a trend across British industry.

British jobs are going overseas, which is obviously a tragedy."

Mr Stokes said the union would start its consultation process with the firm as early as possible.

Alistair Smith, chairman of the West Sussex Economic Partnership, said: "We are obviously very disappointed that any jobs are lost from West Sussex but we do have to accept that labour rates are much cheaper in eastern Europe and the Far East.

"This is the sort of competitive pressure we are under."

He said Sussex firms needed to concentrate on the value they were adding by manufacturing in the UK.

Other county firms to move jobs abroad include Norwich Union, Lloyds TSB, Burgess Hill and Royal and Sun Alliance.

Thursday, January 19, 2006