Concerns over 90 packaging jobs

No-one from the company was making a statement on Thursday

Workers at a packaging factory in Blaenau Gwent are worried about their jobs after the gates were locked.

A meeting of 90 workers at Papermarc Merton in Aberbeeg will be held on Thursday to discuss the future.

Local MP Llew Smith said: "It has been confirmed to me that the factory has gone into liquidation."

Mr Smith said he was worried after the firm's sister factory in Burnley, Lancashire, closed last August with the loss of 300 jobs.

Production planner David Gunther said workers were annoyed that there seemed to be no information coming from factory owners about the future of the plant.

"We're completely in the dark," Mr Gunther told BBC Wales.

"We were supposed to have a meeting with the directors at 10am on Wednesday but none of them turned up.

"The security guards told us they weren't coming. We cannot get any information from the management, we're getting our information from the security guards."

Mr Gunther said the closure had taken everyone by surprise.

"We thought the order books were quite healthy. We had lost a couple of customers but we still had other big customers."

Jobs 'haemorrhage'

The former Fiberite Merton Packaging factory, which makes cartons and cases for the food industry, was taken over five years ago by Papermarc, which itself was taken over in 2003.

Workers gathered outside the plant, which has been shut since Monday

The company went into administration in summer 2004 following a fire at one of its Burnley plants earlier in the year, but the Welsh factory continued trading.

Blaenau Gwent MP Mr Smith said he had been told that the factory was for sale and was worried that jobs in area were becoming scarce.

He said: "We are haemorrhaging jobs in a gigantic way and the types of jobs that are coming are low income, non-union ones."

Islwyn MP Don Touhig said he was "very concerned" and had already been in contact with the workforce and JobCentre Plus.

He said: "I have spoken to the consultants overseeing the process and I understand that a buyer is being sought to take the business forward.

"While it is too early to say what the future will hold, the factory has a committed workforce and good order books."

Worker Tanya Allen said: "We could see we had difficulty supplying customers so we knew something was wrong, but it was the way they did it."

Derek Knight has been working at the factory since it opened 20 years ago.

"I've got a rather large mortgage, family, it's going to be difficult and there aren't many jobs in this area."

Gerry Duggin, editor of Packaging Today magazine, said it was a difficult time for small companies in the industry.

"It's a dog eat dog world at the moment," he said.

"All they have to do is lose one major client to go down the tubes."