ONE of East Lancashire's best known firms has shut its doors for the final time after laying off 40 staff.

Great Harwood Food Products, Balfour Street, called in administrators last September when more than 100 job cuts were announced.

The firm is the largest subsidiary of E Slinger and Sons, and is known in East Lancashire simply as Slingers.

The abattoir side of the 135-year-old business was kept running while the administrators looked at ways to sell the site.

But now the final part of the firm is to be closed and yesterday more than 40 remaining staff were made redundant at an early morning meeting.

Ian Stokoe, joint administrator for Price Waterhouse Coopers, said: "The Great Harwood business was closed at the beginning of January and the vast majority of the workforce were made redundant.

"Since then we have continued to keep the abattoir ticking over at a very low level of turnover but we had to come to the conclusion that we couldn't keep doing it.

"The remaining 40 or so staff were made redundant on Monday morning."

At its peak, Slingers, which buys and processes meat for sale in supermarkets, exported to Europe and countries including South Africa.

The firm struggled following the BSE and Foot and Mouth Disease crises, and the administrators were forced to wind up the business.

Mr Stokoe said: "It was making a profit on the back of the government sponsored cull of cattle, of 30 months ago, but that finished for the company at the turn of the year.

"Since then there has been a little contract slaughtering but it was at a very minor level of £10,000 to £15,000 a week."

Mr Stokoe said it was expected the staff would receive redundancy payment sfrom the government, but today workers said they had been treated badly by the firm.

John Brunt, who worked at Slingers for more than 20 years, said: "We have been in receivership for a while but we were always told that the company was going to try and keep trading so it could be sold as a going concern and we could keep our jobs. Because of that we have been working on the minimum wage since about February we were all trying to help out."