pd ports outlook bleak

Job cuts cloud hangs over PD Ports
By Damian Brett

PD Ports has written to all of 600 its workers at Teesport to inform them that up to 20% of them could be made redundant because of fears over volume decreases.

PD Ports’ CEO David Robinson told IFW it may need to make up to 120 redundancies as steel producer Corus has threatened to close Teeside Cast Products because slab buyers had failed to meet an agreement to buy a set amount of volume.

If the plant were to close the port would potentially lose up to 9m tonnes of dry bulk volume and 2.4m tonnes of finished slab steel.

Robinson said the port had also been hit by a general downturn in traffic, caused by the economic downturn, and P&O Ferries said it was planning to start lashing freight on its ships using its own staff to save money.

Robinson said: “We’ve entered into a consultation period that takes 90 days and no decisions are going to be made until we’ve got certainty over what’s going to happen with the Corus plant and a clear outlook on our business going forward

“We have activated a voluntary redundancy scheme, which is the most professional way of doing this in the short term, and when we know the scale of volunteers we can start to reposition and react to circumstances.

He added: “It will take us a number of weeks and months to know what the outcome of this will be and until such a time as Corus makes a decision we won’t be doing anything material with the overall workforce.”

Posted: 05-06-2009