Crystal and china firm’s administrators announce job cuts at high–noon meeting yesterday.
Nervous employees had their worst fears confirmed at midday yesterday with the announcement that Waterford Wedgwood is to axe over 350 jobs

Hundreds of staff were sent a message on Friday telling them not to return to work after the Christmas shutdown but to instead attend a special meeting at noon yesterday where they received the news.

Deloitte, administrator of Josiah Wedgwood & Sons and Royal Doulton UK - both subsidiaries of Waterford Wedgwood UK - confirmed there will be 367 redundancies at the collapsed company, most of them at the company's site in Barlaston.

Joint administrator and Deloitte's reorganisation services partner, Angus Martin said: "Unfortunately it has been necessary to make 367 employees redundant. A number of these redundancies had already been announced by the company prior to our appointment and the company had also been considering further redundancies at Barlaston later in the year as part of its ongoing restructuring plan. Today's redundancies are out of a total of 1868 across the UK businesses."

He added: "The business will be continuing to trade as normal, and the administrators are continuing discussions with parties who have expressed an interest in purchasing the business. Every effort is being made to avoid further redundancies across the business."

Deloitte is currently in advanced talks with US private equity firm KPS Capital who has expressed an interest in buying most of the tabletop company.

Waterford Wedgwood employs around 600 people at Barlaston and 1,900 in the UK in total.