Redundancies at Manganese Bronze

Manganese sales staff have been informed informed of redundancies by administrators.

While sales are currently suspended, some staff at the factory have been retained to deal with a current recall regarding a fault with the steering.

Matthew Hammond, joint administrator and PwC partner, said: "Regretfully, without financial support to overcome the Group's operational issues we have had to make staff redundancies.

"While the steering box recall remains, there is a voluntary suspension on vehicle sales, and we are now concentrating all resources on testing the solution to the steering fault.

"We have retained sufficient numbers of staff across the dealership, head office and production network to address the operational, technical and financial circumstances that the business faces."  

In total 108 staff have been retained or laid off. The 12 that have been laid off have been sent home on partial pay and will be called back into work should vehicle production start up again.  

Of the 176 employees based at the group’s head office and manufacturing site in Coventry, 99 have been made redundant and of the 98 employees based at the dealerships in London, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Coventry, 57 have been made redundant.

The retained staff based in Coventry will continue to focus on finding a solution for the steering fault alongside head office resource to keep the business running. The remaining staff based in the dealerships across the UK will continue to service taxis and will be involved in the steering box refit once a solution has been found.