Major North Wales furniture factory to close after downturn and M&S decision

A major North Wales factory employing hundreds will shut in a consolidation move. Westbridge Furniture is closing one of its two sites in the region.

This follows a dip in the trading environment and also M&S’s decision to exit the ‘bulky furniture’ market. It will see them leave the Westbridge 3 factory on Deeside Industrial Estate.

All work will consolidate at the Westbridge 2 site in Flint. Many workers will transfer across but the company said the consolidation is expected to result in up to 78 redundancies in the business. This follows an earlier closure of a second manufacturing site on Deeside.

READ MORE: 'Massive explosion' shakes North Wales town and leaves people petrified

READ MORE: He walked into a North Wales shopping centre and stole jewellery worth £56k

The business will retain Westbridge 3 on Deeside with a view of re-starting production in the future if market conditions improve.

A statement from parent company Belfield Group said: "Westbridge will be consolidating all production into a single site facility, with all work transferring from WB3 into WB2 by the end of 2024.

"WB2 will become our sole manufacturing facility, retaining significant capacity through our proposed use of shift patterns, although we will still be retaining our WB3 facility, with a view to re-starting operations in this facility in the future when market conditions improve and volume demand returns."

They added: "Westbridge have faced several impacts over the past year that have led to this decision. The uncertainty in consumer confidence combined with supply-chain and inflation pressures created a difficult trading environment in 2024, an environment that has impacted the whole industry.

"In addition, M&S’s decision to exit the ‘bulky furniture’ market has resulted in us accelerating transformation plans to mitigate the loss of a significant portion of our traditional intake. The decision to move to a single manufacturing site allows us to accelerate our 'factory of the future’ concept providing us solid foundations for growth, whilst rationalising cost to ensure the business can complement its superior design and quality with competitive prices.

"We believe this additional resilience will ensure the long-term success of our business."

The statement added: "Westbridge are taking great steps to ensure that there are no impacts to our customers during the transfer of work from WB3 to WB2. We have a Project team assembled, led by a skilled Project Manager and supported on all project meetings by our Exec team and Senior Management team.

"We are now very experienced at managing the transfer of work between our multi-site facilities, so we are extremely confident we will continue to meet the Westbridge high standards of quality and delivery performance on any transferred product through this period.

"It is our intention to transfer work in stages over the next two months, so we drip feed out of WB3 and drip feed into WB2, ensuring our skilled workforce transfers at the appropriate time alongside all necessary stocks, componentry and customer specific instructions on a customer by customer basis.

"This step by step approach will ensure that each customer is treated as a stand-alone transfer project, with each subsequent project then beginning once the previous project has been completed and production is running with no impacts."

There are also further changes in the wider Belfield Group, which owns Westbridge.

They said: "In addition to site consolidation at Westbridge, Belfield Group have also announced a further review of headcount within their Belfield Leisure business, ensuring resource is aligned appropriately for the forecast demand in 2025. They have also confirmed that they are
proposing to exit the soft furnishing market, with an expected wind-down of operations at their Belfield Home business by 31 st January 2025."