ACW Technology to cut jobs

Last week Evertiq received information relating to the restructure of ACW's Southampton plant, which currently hires over 200 people. ACW Sales Director, David Taylor, confirmed this morning that the company will relocate the factory to a smaller facility in Southampton. The company will centralise its PCB manufacturing site to its Welsh facility, leaving the Southampton plant to focus on backend work, such as box builds and testing. Taylor expects management, purchasing and engineering staff to remain, but said up to 90 positions could be lost. The move is expected in June or July this year. The restructure may create some duplication resulting in job loses in Wales as well, “but not many,” said Taylor. “We'll be increasing our surface mount capacity there (in Wales) so we'll be moving our lines from Southampton up to there... that still leaves us with about five surface mount lines then in Wales,” he explained via phone. The move was due to the recent economic downturn, combined with the company's recent investments in overseas facilities. “A lot of our customers have seen a downturn due to the recent recession and it just makes sense now,” explained Taylor. “We've invested a lot recently in plants around the world, we've got our Far East plant as well. The combination of the two means we don't need to have two surface mount facilities in the UK”. “It still leaves us as one of the biggest contract manufacturers, certainly in the UK , with a fantastic customer base and we'll be growing from there,” he continued.