Nine operations staff in the packaging divisions will lose their jobs, while two vacancies in the external sales force will now not be filled. Stuart Johnson, sales director at TMO, expressed his regret at the redundancies but said they were necessary to enable the company to move forward.
He said: “With the way the market is moving in this next year we had to reorganise the way we operate. We still believe there is a future for the packaging industry but have opted to scale down the size of our operation.”
He also dismissed current industry speculation that TMO was close to being sold. He said: “We knew that the closer we got to regulation there was less chance that we would be bought, because of all the uncertainty that the process brings.”
He said that future business plans would be announced to the industry soon.
Tony Jones, managing director of Skipton-owned Pink Home Loans, said there would be more announcements of redundancies from packagers as the market tightened over the coming year. “Packager firms and networks without strong financial backing will struggle in the coming months,” he said.
Richard Griffiths, managing director of Network Data, commented: “TMO are one of the biggest and long-established packagers in the market and therefore are probably more exposed to market conditions. This may be a temporary blip for them.”
