38 jobs go as Rolls-Royce cuts back in uncertain times
The affected staff are part of a 200-employee division in Patchway which makes turbine blades for engines.
It manufactures 50,000 a year, including blades which power Rolls engines for Airbus and Boeing passenger jets and turbines for warships.
The firm blamed the move on “continuing economic uncertainties” and the fall in demand for passenger aircraft in the last year.
Rolls has 3,500 staff in Patchway, which is the company’s HQ for its defence aerospace business.
The cuts come just three weeks after the Government awarded Rolls-Royce an £865 million contract which safeguarded 500 jobs.
The 10-year deal, announced by Defence Minister Quentin Davies on a visit to the site, will see Rolls maintain and service the engines which power the RAF’s Typhoon jets.
A Rolls-Royce spokesman said: “We are discussing with employee representatives 38 proposed job reductions in the turbines supply chain unit, in Bristol.
“This is due to ongoing economic uncertainties and we are seeking to be as flexible as possible in the long-term interests of our workforce.
“We will seek to achieve as many of these reductions as possible by voluntary severance and natural attrition during the year.”
Rolls spent £75 millionillion on two new 100,000sq ft factory buildings in Gipsy Patch Lane, Patchway. The buildings, which opened in 2008, are used to make engines for military aircraft including the Typhoon fighter jet, the Hawk and the Apache helicopter.
The factory buildings replaced the ageing East Works site on the other side of Gipsy Patch Lane.
The East Works site, which developed engines for Concorde and dated from the Forties, made the whole range of engines for Rolls. It moved all the staff across the road to the Gipsy Patch site in 2008.
The East Works site was then demolished over three months, finishing in June 2009 – with its sale earmarked to pay for the new buildings. But Rolls is currently seeking a buyer for its East Works site, after its £40million sale collapsed in April 2009. The firm had provisionally agreed a sale of the site to developer ProLogis.
It got planning permission in 2008 to develop the 67-acre complex of former machine and engineering shops into 12 separate development sections. These included a hotel, offices, a technology centre, large industrial units and storage units – which ProLogis claimed would have created 2,000 new jobs.
But in April2009, the Evening Post exclusively revealed the sale of the site fell through, which ProLogis and Rolls blamed on the “current adverse economic climate”. At the time, Rolls said the collapse of the sale did not affect its day-to-day operations or the survival of its new factory buildings.
Yesterday, Rolls confirmed the East Works site was still for sale.
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