PRINT company Lords of Burnley has crashed into receivership with the loss of 50 jobs.

Workers who had not been paid for three weeks were given the news as bank creditors moved in to seize machinery at the Trafalgar Mill works.

Print union G.P.A. forced the move in a bid to prevent staff, already owed around £30,000, from losing even more money as promises of wages and an 11th-hour buy-out of the firm again failed to materialise.

Receivers Latham, Crossley and Davis, of Manchester, told employees they would be made redundant with immediate effect when they took control of the works at noon yesterday.

Terry Thompson, union full-time branch secretary for North Lancashire, said there was no hope of saving the firm. Assets would be removed and sold, he added.

And he blasted top management at the high-quality print firm for letting the business collapse.

"What is upsetting people most is that if they had gone into voluntary receivership three weeks ago, Lords could have been sold as a going concern. Now things have gone too far. "Workers have given everything to the company and even gone without pay for an unacceptably long period.

"They are angry and upset. Their treatment has been disgusting and absolutely deplorable in our view."

He said Mark Clarkson, the Wiswell-based entrepreneur and managing director of Lord's parent group UK Print, had neither been seen, nor had he delivered on his many promises of finding a buyer.

The Lords collapse came on the same day that Mr Clarkson announced he had sold another of his firms, Machine Fabricators, of Clayton-le-Moors, to a Scottish company for a "substantial six figure sum" - offering a jobs boom for the firm.

He was not available at his Accrington business base, although an associate said he was likely to make a statement on the Lords situation on Monday.

In Burnley, Mr Thompson said the first payments to workers had been made out of union funds.

The union's action to bring about receivership meant workers would receive money owed them from the state relatively quickly.

Mr Thompson said: "It is the first time in my 31 years' experience that our union has forced a receivership. It was necessary but it is still a very sad day."

Earlier this week, workers complained they had to borrow money to make ends meet.

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