Salmond urges whisky giant to reconsider plans to close distillery

First Minister Alex Salmond today urged drinks giant Diageo to reconsider plans to axe 900 jobs.

He insisted the Scottish Government was doing all it could to persuade the firm to think again.

Diageo announced yesterday that it plans to axe 900 jobs by closing its Kilmarnock packaging plant and its Port Dundas grain distillery in Glasgow, which dates back to 1810.

Mr Salmond said: "We are straining every sinew to get Diageo – a company which has made billions out of Scotland – to consider the full impact of their proposals, particularly on the workforce and community of Kilmarnock."

After a meeting in Edinburgh today with Diageo managing director Brian Donaghey, Mr Salmond said that the company had agreed to hand over the figures behind its proposals for the Government and unions to study.

The Government will use that information to argue for alternative proposals, while urging the company to consider the effects of its plans.

Finance Secretary John Swinney will visit Kilmarnock tomorrow for talks with unions and the local authority as part of the campaign to persuade the firm to change course.

The net job losses would fall to 500 by the creation of 400 jobs at a packaging plant in Fife.

The First Minister has been accused by Des Browne, Labour MP for Kilmarnock, of "snoozing on his watch" by being made aware of the Kilmarnock plan shortly before it was announced.

But Mr Salmond rejected this, saying: "The reality is that that Government had seven meetings with Diageo this year.

"At no stage did the company inform either the unions or the Government what their plans were."

And in a swipe at the MP, he said: "As far as Des Browne is concerned, when a community is challenged with job losses of this enormity, it behoves the local representatives to pull together and to fight jointly for jobs.

"Our concentration as a Government is on the 700 people whose jobs are at risk at Kilmarnock.

"Des Browne seems to be focussed on his own job."

The First Minister said Diageo had agreed to hand over the figures behind its proposals tomorrow, at the start of the 90-day consultation period on the plans.

He said: "We told the company we expect this to be a genuine consultation and we believe they should reconsider their closure proposal."

The particular concern was for Kilmarnock because of the scale of the possible job losses, which could reach 1,000 with spin-off losses.
Mr Salmond, who was accompanied by Communities Minister Alex Neil at today's meeting in Edinburgh, was later today talking by phone to Diageo chief executive Paul Walsh.

And a meeting between the two men was expected "in the near future".
The First Minister also said Mr Donaghey had given an undertaking there would be no compulsory redundancies over the next year.