“Wage costs here 70% higher than in the UK”. Company Balta responds to threatened jobs

Marc Dessein speaks on behalf of Balta’s management: “It was never our intention to do this, but due to the situation of falling demand, rising wage costs, energy costs, we have no choice but to shift the capacities from Belgium to our factories in England. .

The general cost of production is much lower, also due to lower labor costs. Effectively, wage costs in England are 40 percent lower. If I say it the other way around, wage costs in Belgium are 70 percent higher than in England.

Unions fear that this is a first step in which everything will disappear to England. That is not the intention. We are of course looking at how markets continue to evolve, and the crises. In principle, we have plans to concentrate the loose carpets in Sint-Baafs-Vijve. Those plans continue unabated, as do the investments we announced at the time. We’re going to do that. This is not a further step in finishing, we are even going to build up for loose carpets.