Workers redundant at Jensen plant

The company makes the £40,000 SV8 roadster

A prestigious car factory has made its workforce redundant as it considers whether to move production abroad.

The 40 employees at the Jensen car plant in Speke, Liverpool, were told not to return to work on Monday.

Company bosses announced on Friday that workers at the Merseyside plant had officially been made redundant.

It is possible production of the Jensen £40,000 S-V8 sports car will be transferred to a lower-cost country.

The Jensen name dates back to the 1930s

South Africa is one of the locations under consideration.

A spokesman for the company said: "The lads have been coming to the factory every day to see what is going on and they were told about the redundancies this morning."

When the plant was opened last year it was hailed as a coup for the effort to regenerate the area around the former airport site.

Now an intensive review of the business is under way by the company's new owners, the London-based MacDonald Partnership.

The plant at Speke Hall Industrial Estate was built with about £1m of public money including £250,000 from Liverpool City Council.

The original company was founded by the Birmingham-based Jensen brothers in the 1930s.

Prior to the launch of the S-V8 last August, the firm had produced only one car a year for nearly three decades.