MORE than 300 workers in north Ayrshire have been left with little to celebrate over the May Day holiday after being told that they will lose their jobs.

The Jaeger Womenswear plant in Kilmarnock will not re-open after the summer break, putting 153 people out of work. APW Enclosure Systems in Beith will also shut its doors around the same time, with the loss of 158 jobs.

The Jaeger plant, which is owned by textiles giant Coats, has fallen victim to the com-pany's on-going restructuring programme. The work being done there is likely to be transferred to Jaeger & Viyella Retail contractors in Portugal and Romania, where currency exchange rates are more favourable than in the UK.

Coats warned in March that it would have to lay off more UK staff in its continuing efforts to combat the squeeze on margins.

However, Martin Flower, chief executive, declined to put a number on the likely redundancies, or to say where the axe might fall.

The Kilmarnock plant halved its workforce two years ago, and shed a further three cutting-room workers just three weeks ago.

Union leaders at GMB said the plant's closure came as a shock, given that the possibility had not been mentioned during negotiations about the cutting-room staff.

Patricia Burnett, chief executive of Jaeger & Viyella Retail, said in a letter to the workforce that the redundancies were being announced with ''regret''.

''The high street continues to experience increasing pressure on prices, and therefore costs,'' she added.

''It is now possible to achieve the same quality of output at lower cost from overseas.''

The announcement at Kilmarnock was followed by similar news from APW, the mouldings company that makes plastic ATM casings at Willowyard industrial estate in Beith.

Brian Graham, head of human resources at APW, handed in a statutory 90-day notice of redundancies to GMB Scotland yesterday afternoon. He said the site would close, and unless ''opportunities arose'', all 158 jobs would be lost.

Robert Parker, general secretary of GMB Scotland, said the union would be contacting MSPs immediately in an effort to save the jobs involved.

''This announcement, on top

of the (153) job losses announced at Jaeger Womenswear in Kilmarnock earlier today, is a crushing blow for the Garnock Valley in particular and the north of Ayrshire in general,'' Parker said.

''People are genuinely stunned by it, not least the workforce themselves. We will be doing everything in our power to assist them.''

Dawson axes jobs Page 21