STAFFORDSHIRE: Twyford Bathrooms has announced that it will commence consultations with affected employees about considering the closure of the Alsager factory.

The decision to commence consultations with regard to the factory and the technical product development teams does not impact on the commercial functions of Twyford Bathrooms and the UK head office including sales, marketing, customer services, warehousing, logistics and support services. It is intended that these functions will remain at the Cheshire site safeguarding 183 jobs.

Twyford Bathrooms has been part of Sanitec, the European sanitaryware manufacturing group, since January 2001. Increasingly it has been necessary to source increasing amounts of product from elsewhere within the Sanitec Group to remain competitive in the face of increased low cost imports.

The volume of production at Alsager has been decreasing year on year since 2007 and the factory is currently running at 50% capacity.