Veka has announced plans to launch a consultation process, which according to the company, may result in job losses.
In March, the Burnley based PVC-U window system company temporarily closed operations in the UK and place most of its staff on Furlough due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having reopened on 11 May 2020, albeit in a controlled and scaled manner to fulfil a returning demand from customers, Veka says that ‘it has become clear that the business is not going to bounce-back to pre Covid-19 levels and as such action must be taken to rescale the business in light of significantly reduced sales’.
Managing director of Veka, Dave Jones, said: “Veka has taken a number of actions over the past months to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 from arranging financial support to putting all non- essential spend on indefinite hold. However, upon our return on the 11 May and speaking with our customer base over recent weeks, we have identified some significant customer losses – one of whom went into administration just last week, which will have a substantial impact on our business.”
Veka started the process yesterday, Monday 15 June, initially looking to establish an employee elected committee responsible for taking group redundancy consultations and from there it says it will follow the process as set out by relevant employment law rules and regulations.
“Having taken all available options to us to ensure our business remains sustainable, we are now forced to take a more prudent approach to all company expenditure and to review the resource requirements in light of this predicted drop in sales,” continued Dave. “That said, at this stage we cannot confirm exact numbers of potential redundancies, however we will continue to monitor situation on a daily basis throughout the process.
“This is not the year we, the board of directors, had planned for Veka in 2020 and we are disappointed that COVID-19 has had such an impact on our economy, industry and business despite the strong support packages from the government and saddened that this will ultimately result in losing valued employees.”
