ONE of Bridport’s biggest employers is to lay off 13 workers after deciding to bow out of manufacturing spare parts for older military aircraft.

Amsafe’s vice-president of defence Neal McKeever said it was always a hard decision to make people redundant but it was no longer viable for the Bridport netting and defence industry to continue in the increasingly competitive market.

Although there have been 13 redundancies, four other workers have been re-deployed and four people have taken voluntary redundancy from other parts of the business.

By contrast, eight new engineers have been taken on in the last few weeks to cope with the contracts the company has won for its newly designed products, he said.

Mr McKeever said they had tried last July to cut costs in the spare parts business, called the Defence Aftermarket business – which they had been operating for 20 years in Ringwood – by closing down the site and moving 15 workers to Bridport.

He said: “Sadly, despite making these cost savings we have continued to find that market extremely competitive and it has not delivered the financial returns we needed and just wasn’t viable.”

He said the markets were largely for international military operators in Asia and the Middle East and increasingly those countries were using indigenous companies with consequently cheaper labour and overheads and more competitive prices.

So after a review of the business, which employs 155 people on the Bridport site – it was decided to concentrate on the products designed and made in Bridport, he said.

In the past few months Amsafe has won five big new contracts and of those, four are for new products.

Mr McKeever added: “We have a lot of exciting new products, some of which are phenomenal innovations, which is why we have chosen the strategic change in direction which has resulted in this regrettable decision to get out of the defence aftermarket which was making very low profits.

“Nobody enjoys redundancy but at the same time the rationale and background was an increasingly competitive market and having many more opportunities to focus our energies and grow the business with the products we design and manufacture here.”

Among the new products are a ‘quick shield’ repair net designed to protect vehicles whose armour plating has been damaged by grenade attacks.