A TOWN hit by the withdrawal of several major employers such as Rolls Royce and HMRC has attracted a new call centre that will create up to 500 new jobs.
AGO Outsourcing says the jobs at the Scottish Enterprise Technology Park in East Kilbride were part of a £40m investment over five years.
Some 90 of the positions will be in sales while an additional 380 will be created in customer service, financial services and social media departments.
East Kilbride is estimated to have lost thousands of local jobs from the departure of major firms over ten years.
It is understood that initially the firm will be working in partnership with a major energy supplier.
In 2015 it was announced hundreds of jobs were to go from the town's HMRC office over 10 years.
Rolls-Royce closed its 60-year-old engine maintenance plant at East Kilbride in December the same year and transferred the operations and employees to Inchinnan. About 1,300 people work at the Renfrewshire plant.
The aerospace giant, once employed 4000 people in East Kilbride, and the move severed a long-standing association that has lasted almost since the New Town was founded in the 1940s.
The East Kilbride Task Force was set up by South Lanarkshire Council in the following the Rolls-Royce bombshell, and was charged with creating jobs, improving business opportunities and developing long-term strategies for the town.
Semi-conductor maker Freescale, who had a research and development base in Kelvin Industrial Estate – a facility established by Motorola in 1969 – ceased manufacturing in 2009 which led to the loss of around 850 jobs.
Three years later production at Motorola - which at its peak employed more than 2500 workers - stopped in the town. It was the place where, for four decades, microchips had been manufactured for the world's leading car makers.
AGO said they expected to see 90 new jobs initially over the next few months with a second phase expected to launch in early 2018, which will create an additional 380 jobs created.
AGO managing directror Kris McGenily said the decision to base its new centre in East Kilbride was "not an easy one" and came after "many months" spent examining sites around Scotland.
"The venue was the former home of Scottish Nuclear and as soon as we saw it, we knew it had everything we had hoped for," he said.
"East Kilbride has seen significant job losses over the years including Motorola, Freescale, Rolls Royce and most the announcement by HMRC....
"In addition to this, the lack of businesses of this type in East Kilbride meant we could become a strong employer within the area, and building long term careers is something we are very passionate about."
Contact centre operations manager, Denise Cassidy added: "This announcement could not have come at a better time for this sector, and I'm delighted that East Kilbride has been selected as the hosting location."
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 hereComments are closed on this article