Factory boss Nigel Brown says everything was done to try and avoid the announcement of the need for up to 25 redundancies.

Ronaldsway Aircraft Company chief executive Nigel Brown spoke to the Manx Independent after he had broken the details to the 225 employees earlier this week.

As reported in this week’s Examiner the company says the focus of the business has been changing in response to the developing requirements of customers in the aerospace industry.

Mr Brown confirmed between 20 and 25 roles were affected.

Mr Brown, who took over in the hot seat at Ronaldsway in 2015, the company’s diamond anniversary year, told the Independent: ’We are setting up consultation with people from the affected areas within the business. We will work through a full consultation process with all our employees and offer support to anyone affected.’

He added: ’Having said that we still need to recruit manufacturing engineers and estimators into the business.’

The company says it is ’now apparent that we cannot avoid a formal restructuing process.’

Sitting in his office at the Ballasalla factory, Mr Brown explained:’The restructure is driven by the need to reshape the business, to fit the needs of customers. Essentially we will look to accept volunteers [for redundancy] wherever possible.

’Obviously it needs to fit with the requirements of the business . That has been made clear to the staff and will all be part of the 30-day consultation process. It is important that we explore all avenues to minimise the redundancies.’

Mr Brown added: ’This is not a decision we took quickly or lightly.’

Asked about the reaction of the staff to the news Mr Brown said: ’To be fair I think the reaction was quite muted. But at the end of the day our employees know the dynamics have changed.

’We have hung on for as long as we could. We looked at all the different types of opportunities but there comes a point where you have to say: ’’Well actually, this is not financially sustainable’’

’It is never an easy decision [to announce redundancies], we have been working to try and avoid this for eight to 10 months.

’We have taken a long time to come to the conclusion and it is based around the future of the business.’

Mr Brown said the ’aim at the moment is to deal with employees on a fair and equitable basis and to do whatever we can to help them through what will be obviously a difficult time and difficult process.’

Mr Brown added: ’These sorts of circumstances are very unfortunate and occasionally business changes. So unfortunately we don’t need the skills we needed 40 years ago.

’As you introduce new technology some of the older manual skills that we have, certainly cannot continue and there are quicker and faster machines.

’So in order to be competitive in the marketplace we need to invest in new technology and the company is still continuing to invest in new equipment during this process.’

He stressed that as the company moved with the times there was still a bright future for the business.

The company will continue to take on apprentices this summer.