A GLOBAL PHARMACEUTICAL company which this week announced profits of £5.5 billion for 2002 is to make the first round of redundancies at its Ulverston factory in April.

GlaxoSmithKline announced in September last year that it was going to make 400 redundancies at the Ulverston factory over the next two years.

The consultation period ended on January 31 and this week the company announced that the first round of job losses was to be made in April. A company spokeswoman said the 73 job losses would be selected from those who had come forward for voluntary redundancy.

The company refused to disclose when the next round of redundancies would be made.

The news of the first round of job losses comes the same week that the company announced global sales of nearly £18 billion and US growth of 13 per cent in 2002.

The quarterly report also said GlaxoSmithKline sales were up by seven per cent and that there was a trading profit growth of 15 per cent for last year, compared to 2001.

The company is blaming the redundancies at the Ulverston plant on competition from other manufacturers copying GSK drugs.

It claims that it has had to consider stopping making a key antibiotic ingredient - known as 7ACA - at Ulverston and buy it instead from manufacturers in Europe and Asia.

Since the company's announcement about the job losses, more than 200 people have come forward for voluntary redundancy.

Union officials are still talking to management at Glaxo to try to get them to agree not to make any compulsory redundancies this year. The company still says that it cannot rule it out.

February 14, 2003 12:00