Union seeks details of offer on table for Hall’s

Despite an announcement on Friday from Dutch owner Vion that a phased shutdown will start later this month, private equity firm Graf Capital has said it wants to take over the factory as a going concern and claims it could have a viable long-term future,

Lawrence Wason of Usdaw said he was disappointed Vion had announced the closure: “I formally requested they extend the consultation period so talks could  continue but they obviously ignored that.”

Unions are due to meet management tomorrow ahead of another meeting of the task force.

Mr Wason said: “While we don’t know the nuts and bolts of the offer, if someone is saying ‘We will give you X amount of money and save 1700 jobs’ and then Vion say ‘We don’t think that’s viable’, we need to drill into that.

“But we also need to preserve what’s there for the workforce. We would not want to see the site sold and after a few months the new employer goes totally bust and people lose out on redundancy payments.”