40 laid off at hard-hit builders

One of the area’s major employers, Caledonian Building Systems, is laying off 40 of 250 staff.

The company makes modular and prefabricated steel-framed buildings for hotels, prisons, the military and residential developers.

Caledonian operates four factories on its 42-acre site at Carlton-on-Trent.

At the start of the year the firm made 30 employees redundant. The working week was cut from five days to three.

In July, to stave off further redundancies and off-set delays in contracts coming through from the MoD, Caledonian temporarily laid off 56 staff and reduced the operating times of its factories.

It secured a £3.5m increase in its working capital facility with the Royal Bank of Scotland that was used to fulfil the delayed MoD contracts and others from the Prison Service.

The remaining staff have returned to a five-day week.

The managing director, Mr Dave Turnbull, said: “I made a commitment at the beginning of the year to keep on as many as possible and that has not changed.

“The construction industry has taken a real bashing over the last 18 months.

“There has been a decline of 15-16% and a further 5% decline is predicted.

“I am trying everything I can to minimise the impact of this on the workforce. We haven’t built a hotel for quite some time.”

Turnover at Caledonian peaked at £140m in December 2007. It was down to £135m in December 2008 and a further drop is anticipated this year.

“Without a crystal ball I can’t say whether more (redundancies) will be needed in the future,” said Mr Turnbull.

Caledonian’s US parent company, Champion Enterprises Inc, on Monday announced that, together with its US domestic operating subsidiaries, it was filing voluntary petitions for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code.

Champion Enterprises Inc bought Caledonian in a £63m deal in 2006.

Champion Enterprises has joined some of its creditors to agree a $40m credit facility to help it reorganise its operations and meet its obligations, running costs and ongoing orders while a rescue package or sale is agreed with a judge.

Champion’s overseas subsidiaries in the UK and Canada are exempt from the petitions but could be sold in the future.

Mr Turnbull said events in the US would have no immediate impact on Caledonian’s operations as the company was autonomous and self-financing.

But he said it was too early to say whether there could be a sale of assets, of which Caledonian was one.

Mr Turnbull was asked whether Caledonian would be an attractive proposition should it be sold.

He said he was “extremely confident we could achieve enough capital” but declined to say whether a management buyout was on the cards.

l It emerged this week that 160 British-based workers at Staythorpe Power Station were being made redundant.

A spokesman for Alstom, which employs the workers, said it was always the intention for the jobs to go once construction of the power station passed its peak.

Work is due to be completed by next summer.

Alstom’s 130 Polish workers will also be leaving the site.

The jobs will be phased out from the end of this month to the end of March, when most of the power station will have been built.

Around 1,800 people in total have been working on the site, the rest being employed by sub-contractors.

The Alstom spokesman said the workers had always known they were on short-term contracts.

She said Alstom followed the correct process and procedure in making the redundancies, including a 90-day consultation that began in August.