NEARLY 70 jobs will be lost following a decision by The Scotts Company to axe its Suffolk manufacturing site and shift production elsewhere.The company announced last August that it was reviewing its fertiliser and chemicals manufacturing strategy in the UK and that this could lead to the closure of the manufacturing plant in Bramford, near Ipswich.

NEARLY 70 jobs will be lost following a decision by The Scotts Company to axe its Suffolk manufacturing site and shift production elsewhere.

The company announced last August that it was reviewing its fertiliser and chemicals manufacturing strategy in the UK and that this could lead to the closure of the manufacturing plant in Bramford, near Ipswich.

Now, after a three month consultation period, Scotts has announced that the plant will be shut by mid summer 2003 and that 69 workers will lose their jobs at the site, although the number of actual redundancies may be reduced if some workers agree to transfer with the business.

According to the company, about 55 staff working at Scotts' main office on the site will be unaffected by the decision.

The closure decision severs the final link with the long-established name of Fisons of Ipswich, ending 150 years of fertiliser production in the Suffolk village, where Joseph Fison established an agricultural business on the same site in 1858.

The company said that production would be transferred from Bramford to its Howden site in Goole, East Yorkshire, and to another Scotts plant at Bourth in Normandy, France.

Nick Kirkbride, managing director, said that for those staff who may be facing redundancy, arrangements were being made for a series of outplacement support programmes to help them make a successful transition to new circumstances after they have left Scotts' employment.

"We have reluctantly decided to close the Bramford production facility in order to more closely align manufacturing capacity with market demand and to realise cost savings from the concentration of fertiliser manufacture at one site," he said.

"We will be creating new jobs at the Howden site in the coming months and hope that a number of Bramford employees will relocate."

Mr Kirkbridge said that the company was conscious of the "long and excellent" service that many of staff members had given Scotts over the years.

"We will be doing all that we can to make the transition as painless and easy as possible for both them and their families," he said.