An electric motor manufacturing company based in Bray Co Wicklow has told its 150 staff that it is considering making them redundant.
A spokesman for AO Smith Electric Motors told RTE News that five consecutive years of losses, coupled with increasing competition from rival manufacturers based in China and other Asian countries, had made the Bray operation unsustainable.
Staff at the plant on the Boghall Road in Bray were informed of the situation last Tuesday.
The company has now begun a 30-day consultation period, during which management from its US parent will work with local managers and union officials to see if a mechanism can be found to save the jobs and mitigate the losses. The first meeting under this process took place at the weekend.
AO Smith Electrical Products Company is an Ohio-based New York Stock Exchange listed multinational, employing more than 17,000 employees across the world. It specialises in making electric motor components for furnaces, air conditioners, pumps, refrigerators and garage door openers. The Bray plant makes hermetic motors for commercial air conditioning and refrigeration units. It opened in 1976.
Spokesman for AO Smith, Mark Petrarca, told RTE News that the company's experience in Ireland had been a positive one, and that was why it was keen to find a way to keep the factory open. But he added that this depended on making the operation more competitive. A decision on the company's future should be known by mid-April.
