Shropshire Star

Another 27 jobs to go at Telford's GKN plant

Another 27 jobs are set to go at Telford's GKN plant – on top of the 230 redundancies announced just two months ago.

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The job losses will be at GKN's Hybrid Power subsidiary, which is to stop fitting buses with new energy-saving flywheel technology, just two years after it was launched.

Hybrid was formed in 2014 after GKN took over an arm of the Williams Formula One racing team. In October last year(15) the company was awarded the prestigious RAC Dewar Trophy for its work in developing the technology, which had been fitted to a number of London buses.

However, a worker at the Hadley Castle plant, who declined to be named, said that many of the buses had experienced reliability problems, and that the cost savings had not been as good as expected.

GKN's head of communications Nicola Foster said: "GKN has announced the intention to reduce employee numbers in its Hybrid Power business in Telford following its decision to refocus its innovative flywheel technology towards other markets and stop retrofitting buses with the technology.

"Hybridisation, including flywheels, remains a very exciting technology and GKN will continue to invest in this area of engineering and direct it towards our automotive business.

"Over the course of the past years the hybrid and all electric bus market has continued to evolve and we judge that other markets, in particular automotive, offer greater opportunities than the retrofitting of the flywheel technology to buses.

"Nonetheless, our technology is being used successfully on buses in a number of UK cities and we are in discussions with our customers regarding ongoing support for a number of these fleets."

She added that up to 27 jobs were at risk, although efforts would be made to find alternative employment elsewhere in the company for those affected.

"GKN is committed to, and is continuing to invest, in its Telford site, and is focused on rebalancing the business to ensure it has a strong future," she said.

In March it was announced that 230 workers at the site had been issued with redundancy notices after it emerged the contract to build the Land Rover T5 chassis was coming to an end in August.

That number included 87 workers who had previously been given redundancy notices last year with the end of another Land Rover contract.

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