The Scottish Government will leave "no stone unturned" to save hundreds of jobs at an electronics plant facing closure, the First Minister has said.
Semiconductor firm Texas Instruments (TI) said the phased closure of its Inverclyde base would involve moving production to sites in Germany, Japan and the United States over the next three years.
If the Greenock plant closes, 365 jobs will be impacted across manufacturing, engineering, support and management positions.
Speaking at First Minister's Questions at Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon said: "I appreciate that this will be an extremely worrying time for employees of Texas Instruments and their families."
The firm wants to sell and transfer the facility as an ongoing manufacturing operation (manufacturing-related jobs, equipment, land and building).
Any potential job losses were not anticipated to happen before late 2017.
Ms Sturgeon added: "That does mean we have an important window of opportunity to work with the company to do everything we can to help find a buyer that will maintain jobs in Greenock."
She said the Scottish Government will be "fully engaged" in supporting a task force set up by Councillor Stephen McCabe, leader of Inverclyde Council.
Business Minister Fergus Ewing has already written to Mr McCabe proposing a meeting on Monday, she said.
Ms Sturgeon added: "We will do everything we can to preserve this company and the jobs
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel