TOUGH times still lie ahead for the remaining workers at one of Pendle's biggest firms despite a buy-out that saved their jobs.

Bill Carrahar, the new boss at Nelson-based furniture manufacturer Buoyant, said the 300 staff whose jobs were salvaged faced uncertainty, including the possibility of short-time working, until moves into new areas of business started paying dividends.

The 170 workers who were made redundant before Nottingham-based Wade Furniture Group stepped in to buy Buoyant out of administrative receivership would not be re-employed, although Mr Carrahar said it was hoped the firm could start taking on workers once the company was re-established.

Buoyant is taking on a new design team to come up with ideas for new product ranges to boost the business.

"When a company goes into receivership it does a certain amount of damage to customer confidence," said Mr Carrahar, who was brought in by Wade to become Buoyant's managing director.

"It's not just a matter of turning the tap back on and everything is all right because you have to re-establish that confidence. "We are going to broaden our range of products to help do that.

"The way Buoyant worked was that our customers had examples of our work in the showroom and took orders from them.

"When the firm went into receivership some customers pulled the designs out of the showroom until they knew what the situation was.

"Now we are getting them to put the designs out again. It is all part of re-establishing confidence in the firm."

Mr Carrahar said he hoped that once Buoyant was re-established it could start looking at taking on workers.

"As the order book increases then the first people we would tend to look at would be the good people we had to lose," he said.

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