BOSSES at one of North Yorkshire's major employers have been forced to recruit Portuguese workers after failing to fill vacancies with local people.

The Malton Bacon Factory is believed to have taken on as many as 200 of the migrant workers to cope with the seasonal rush.

Parent company Grampian Food Group would not say how many Portuguese workers are at the factory but spokesman Alasdair Cox said "every effort" was made to fill the vacancies with local workers.

He said: "We have been trying very hard to recruit locally and still would like to recruit local workers, but we have had a very poor uptake from local people.

"There is nothing untoward here and this is not just isolated to Malton Bacon Factory. If you go through the food industry you will find many other factories that recruit agency staff."

The Portuguese workers were agency staff, being paid at the same rate as their colleagues and were doing the job very well, he said.

Local district councillor Allin Jenkins put the lack of local applications down to the low unemployment rate, both in Ryedale and nationally.

He said: "The factory is a major employer and always has been. It has also traditionally drawn members of its workforce from outside of Ryedale, and from what I have heard it is not alone in employing Portuguese workers.

"We are part and parcel of the EU and it is a two-way thing. I remember when the building industry was not so buoyant in this country workers from that section were going abroad."