BPI are one of the biggest if not THE biggest polythene manufacture in Europe, they even have places in China.
My site has gone through a number of changes over the last 2 years, basicaly going from extruding big industrial polythene film for heavy industry (no money in it these days ) too retail polythene bags / sheets ect, where there is far more money to be earned.
It was a completly different product and i think it was all done too fast, the people on the shop floor had never done anything like this before and it quickly showed.
We make all the bags for Tesco, Next, Rockwool, Sainsbury, and many more, there is huge money in retail polythene, especialy if the bag/film has a print applied to it.
For instance the Next contract alone was said to be in the region of £9 million every 4 years, now you can see why Next charge £75 for a bloody shirt.
How BPI say we were losing money is beyond me, personaly i think it's behind the scenes politics thats has closed the Swansea site down.
My particular job was shift supervisor in extrusion dept, basicaly turning a small plastic pellet into polythene by means of blending and extruding.
The finished polythene was then converted into sheets, bags, shrouds, ect ect in another department.
Anyway not sure what the future holds, but i'm gonna try and hold onto the RCZ for a few weeks at least but in reality i think she's gonna have to go.
I'm a bit too old to go back to school, and may just try something totaly different.
Watch this space as they say :roll:
Ron,
All 49 of us laid off, most with families, my opposite supervisor's wife also worked there, so both their incomes have now gone !
The worrying thing is that most of us have worked there for 20 or 30 years so it's all we know and blown film extruding is not really widely popular in the jobs market.