1,200 more GKN job cuts

Car parts and engineering firm GKN today said it would cut an extra 1,200 jobs over the next two years after announcing a £16 million loss for the first half of the year.

The company, which axed 141 workers in February from its Hadley Castle plant in Telford, blamed the battering of the automotive market for its slide into the red.

The Redditch-based company made a £118 million profit for the same period a year earlier but was forced to axe 2,500 jobs this year under cost-cutting plans – including 564 in the UK.

Today's extra job losses will not affect UK staff but came after weaker than expected car markets in the US, Japan and Europe saw demand plunge.

Its off-highway division has also seen a "more rapid and deeper" decline than forecast. But the firm added that its swingeing cuts programme was beginning to have an impact on the automotive division, which returned to profit in June.