MORE than 70 jobs are likely to be lost at a food factory following a takeover.

Staff from senior managers to line operators are facing redundancy at Kerry Foods, in Hartlepool, a spokesman confirmed last night.

Kerry Foods, based in Ireland, bought Hibernia Foods' ready meals business last year after it went into receivership.

A spokesman for Kerry said the company was carrying out restructuring and that 70 people at its Hartlepool factory had been spoken to about redundancies.

But he said there were significant numbers of jobs, some new and some vacant, at the company's site in County Durham.

Kerry Foods carried out a review of its business which has led to the job losses.

Spokesman Frank Hayes said: "We have acquired three of the former Hibernia group factories that were in receivership. We are now focused on securing the future of those businesses within our own operations. Hartlepool is involved in ready meal production.

"We have a number of other facilities with the business on ready meals sites and, regrettably, this means that we have gone into consultation with 70 workers from senior management across to operators with the view to restrict that operation - effectively there are 70 redundancies.

"But we do have significant employment opportunities at our Kerry Foods site in Durham. I cannot say how many, but they are more likely to be for operator level rather than management.

"So they will not replace the jobs, but they should significantly help the workforce being made redundant from the Hartlepool factory."

The news comes only weeks after Country Style Foods, which bought another of Hibernia's plants on the Preston Farm industrial estate in Stockton, shed 70 jobs.

Alan Milne, of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, said: "It is disappointing that we are seeing job losses at another former Hibernia site."

He said that food companies were suffering from increasingly low prices demanded by supermarkets.

Kerry said it had not come under such pressure.