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Bye, Bye, Westlands Yeovil?


Seahawk

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The story you refer to reports the frankly appalling news that around 270 staff of GKN Aerospace were all told to go home shortly after arriving at work this morning, with the likely prospect of redundancies and closure of the facility.

GKN Aerospace's Yeovil facility is located on the Leonardo Yeovil site, and is a separate company, a legacy of the years of GKN Ownership of Westland Helicopters.

 

The news does not involve any staff of Leonardo (formerly AgustaWestland) but I will of course pass on your obvious sympathies to my friends and colleagues at our sister company, and mourn the loss of the high skilled jobs from my local area.

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58 minutes ago, Troffa said:

 I will of course pass on your obvious sympathies to my friends and colleagues at our sister company, and mourn the loss of the high skilled jobs from my local area.

 

Please do.  That was absolutely the first I had heard of such shocking news.  Not just the loss of high-skilled jobs but of the ability to support a crucial component of our defence capability.

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An aviation company of a similar size that I once worked for closed in a similar way as did another literally across the road from it. The same thing happened to the division I worked for in another company. 

 

Companies like that are always vulnerable to market forces and indeed political forces. The fact of them being efficient isn't always relevant. 

 

I think you may be seeing more of this type of situation soon in view of certain developments.

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On 07/10/2016 at 6:07 PM, Seahawk said:

 

Not just the loss of high-skilled jobs but of the ability to support a crucial component of our defence capability.

As reported on the local news the reason GKN may be closing is that they build Wildcat airframes and Westland (sorry, Donatello, or whichever Ninja Turtle it is) would prefer to pull that back in-house.  So, while the company may pull out, some of the staff may move across if it goes well; and the industrial base should undergo no net change.

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