CELESTICA REDUNDANCIES:CANADIAN ELECTRONICS manufacturing company Celestica is to make 80 staff redundant at its Galway plant within weeks.
Day and night-shift staff among its 380-strong workforce were informed of the development at a meeting in the company’s Parkmore facility in Galway last night.
The company would make no comment after the hour-long meeting, and security asked journalists to leave the premises.
However, it is understood a voluntary redundancy package is on offer initially, and the company has said it has no immediate plans to close its Galway operation.
Staff had been anticipating difficulties, as working hours were reduced last week. Mayor of Galway Padraig Conneely (Fine Gael) said there had been no warning at a meeting he had with the IDA earlier this week. He described it last night as a “major shock”.
Celestica, previously owned by Manufacturer’s Services Ltd, employs 380 staff in automated manufacturing. One of its main contracts is the production of Hewlett-Packard inkjet cartridges.
The Nasdaq-quoted company employs 43,000 people worldwide, with 30 manufacturing and design bases across Europe, America and Asia.
It reported revenue of $1,935 million (€1,506 million) compared to $2,211 million for the same period last year, in its fourth-quarter results for 2008.
The Galway plant was established in 2000 and acquired in 2004 by Celestica, which is based in Toronto, Canada. Celestica previously had a plant in Swords, Co Dublin, producing printed circuit boards and specialist products for the telecoms industry.
It employed 1,000 staff at peak, but the Swords plant closed in 2003 when the company followed many of its counterparts to eastern Europe – opening up in the Czech Republic.
In November 2007, it announced it was creating an additional 120 jobs in Galway to develop a disposable power source capable of providing direct power or battery charges for portable electronic devices such as iPods, mobile phones and games players.
