Bernard Matthews employees face redundancy

Employees at Norfolk-based company Bernard Matthews Farms are facing the prospect of redundancy.

More than 40 posts are set to be slashed from its workforce at its headquarters in Great Witchingham and a separate facility in Suffolk.

It is understood that salaried staff and hourly paid engineers are likely to be laid off, which means members of Bernard Matthews Farms’ management team could be among those to lose their jobs.

Andrew Sherwood, human resources director at the firm, commented: “We are constantly looking at ways of making the business better able to cope with the challenging and highly competitive economic environment.

“These structural changes are part of this process.”

He added that the aim is to make Bernard Matthews’ operations more efficient and sustainable.

This comes after figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed that in the three months to May 2009, unemployment in the UK rose to 2.38 million.