BREAKING NEWS: Largo Foods, which employs 140 people in Co Donegal, is to close its local operation.
Local TD Dinny McGinley after government funding was announce for the Largo plant some years back.
Shell-shocked workers at the Gaoth Dobhair plant, have just been told of the announcement.
The company plans to move all its operations to its main plant in Ashbourne, Co Meath.
It is understood that 70 employees will be given the chance to move to work in the Co Meath plant.
Údarás na Gaeltachta said it is very disappointed at the announcement.
Largo Foods currently employs 110 people on a full-time basis and 30 people on the part-time basis at the company’s manufacturing facility in the Gaoth Dobhair Business Park, Co. Donegal.
Largo say they have made this decision based on a strategic review by the company of its manufacturing sites in Ireland and in the UK which focused on the need to consolidate its operations, reduces its overall costs, and to allow it to operate sustainably in a very competitive snack-food market.
Currently, 85% of the products produced in Gaoth Dobhair is exported to the UK and further afield.
Competition in the snack-based market has intensified in the last decade, and in past five years the company has been continuously attempting to develop and introduce new high value-added products to Gaoth Dobhair to sustain its operations there, but to limited success.
Údarás na Gaeltachta has supported and worked closely with Largo Foods group companies in the last 18 years since they were established in Gaoth Dobhair.
“We very much regret the implications that this proposal will have for Largo Foods’ employees in Gaoth Dobhair. An tÚdarás will prioritise its efforts and put in place a strategic marketing drive in a bid to attract new investment and employment opportunities to the Gaoth Dobhair Business Park,” said a spokesman.
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