THIRTEEN PROMENS employees at Beccles could lose their jobs as the company aims to “restructure,” it was announced on Monday .The Icelandic plastics company, which has a factory on the Ellough Industrial Estate employing 220 people, say they want to transform the business in order to make it more efficient in the economic downturn.

THIRTEEN PROMENS employees at Beccles could lose their jobs as the company aims to “restructure,” it was announced on Monday .

The Icelandic plastics company, which has a factory on the Ellough Industrial Estate employing 220 people, say they want to transform the business in order to make it more efficient in the economic downturn.

Promens was in talks with the workers' union Unite yesterday , and enters a 30 day consultation period from Monday.

They say that the proposed redundancies would be “across the board” and not from any specific area of the work force, and the redundancies will not affect Promen's other East Anglian factory in Thetford.

Sharon Hill, human resources manager, claimed that the move was a positive step aimed at ultimately securing jobs. “This is about transforming the business and surviving the climate,” she added.

Promens was in the news last summer when workers staged five 24-hour walk outs because they were unhappy with low pay rises, which they claimed were below inflation.

And the Union was also in action at the end of 2007, just months after the company took over from Polimoon, when Promens proposed 20 redundancies from the engineering staff. The Beccles factory had traded as Fibrenyle until 2003.

Promens makes plastic packaging for household brands such as Dettol, Radox and Tresemm�, and has three packaging factories in the UK. It also serves industries such as food processing and the heavy machinery and electronic industries.

It is one of the world's largest plastics manufacturers and has 60 manufacturing plants in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia. The company employs some 6000 people across the world.