Robson's drops Scots
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by Juliet Parish
• Robson's Distribution Services is retreating from the highly competitive Scottish haulage market, making 43 of its 51 Scots drivers redundant in the next few weeks. A total of 62 staff will leave the company when it progressively reduces the amount of haulage it carries out for its major customer United Glass. The UCI Logistics subsidiary says it agreed with United Glass to reduce "substantially" the amount of distribution it carries out for the manufacturer in a bid to stem its transport arm's losses. Next month it expects to report Lim losses on a .i1.4m turnover for its transport division during 1993. Eight drivers at Alloa and nine warehouse and administrative staff at Baillieston will be unaffected by the change. They will continue to work for United Glass, in a reduced capacity, collecting glass from United Glass's Alloa site and distribut ing it to customers in England and Scotland and to the Baillieston warehouse. Robson's will continue to handle its current amount of work for United Glass in England, where it operates 114 trucks from 13 sites. Robson's director Gerald Sanders says the Scottish business—which relied on United Glass for at least 85% of its turnover—was hard to develop, because there are not many manufacturing firms in the area. The Sutton in Ashfield, Notts firm closed its Glasgow warehouse on 17 December making three staff redundant. United Glass will not comment on which hauliers it plans to give the spare Scottish work to, although current contractors WH Malcolm and TDG subsidiary Inter-City are expected to win an increased share. Transport General ',Yorkers Union district officer John Murray plans to fight the redundancies.