Furniture firm may axe 100 jobs

3:30pm Tuesday 19th August 2008

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UP to 100 voluntary redundancies are being sought at the Moores Furniture Group as the factory at Thorpe Arch, Wetherby, is hit by the slump in house building.

The 600,000 sq ft plant which employs 1,000 people, many of them from York, is the UK market leader in making and supplying quality kitchen and bathroom furniture in both the public and private house building markets.

Peter Wilson, chief executive of the group said he was looking for between 50 and 100 volunteers. “Exactly how many we can’t say until we know the full extent of how hard we are hit by the depressed housing industry.

“We are trying to minimise the losses. We have never made anyone redundant due to market forces in the last 20 to 25 years. “We are trying to maintain our record for keeping as many people as we can.”

But what began in the financial sector, and then hit the housing market “is now cascading down to the supply chain,” he said.

Last year Moores Furniture Group recorded £100 million turnover, “but I suspect that this year it will be down on that given the situation we are facing,” said Mr Wilson.

He stressed that although the group was very dependant on the housebuilding industry which in some areas was 40 per cent down on last year, the fall for the group would be “nothing like that given our strength of supply to the public and retail sectors”.

He said: “They are bound to come back. The underlying demand for houses in the UK is still very, very high. It is just a matter of where and when. Unfortunately, it won’t be for a year or so.”