Decline of Carlow Manufacturing

road_high

Driving around Carlow the other day it got me thinking.
Normally this time of year in Carlow (and KK,Laois,Kildare....) the roads would be filthy with beet traffic; there were 300+ good jobs gone and the now flattened site on the Athy road would be its' usual hive of activity. Looking back the inconvenience of the extra trucks and tractors was a very small price to pay.
Also passing by Braun and Lapple and thinking of their once packed car parks. 1400 and 300 in each of these in their hay day; and that was not a long time ago at all; ten years ago or less as the real (i.e. productive/competitive) days of the Celtic Tiger these places were humming.

I'd love to know what all these former workers are at now?
One positive at least is Merck and their big new facility on stream; though their 170 jobs seems to pale in comparison to the numbers outlined. Very sad indeed . Pity there was no effort to save these jobs...

Whosbetter?

Totally agree with you there.

Sadly there has been a total lack of decent political representation in this area for longer than I can remember.

New jobs have been created in the retail/services sector, however, but they're not real career options for anybody with real ambition though.

Imagine what it would have been like here if we got something like 'Intel' in the boom years?

Given our location, something should & could have been done.

HugoIrl

All areas suffer decline, everyone knows research and development is the way forward. With the new motorway due to open soon, hopefully this will help some manufacturing to expand and carlow can push forward.

More IDA support would be great for carlow, but I think we're just becoming another commuter town for dublin.

lucylu

Thompsons is closing tomorrow too

testicle

Ireland, not just Carlow, can not compete with anyone in the manufacturing business. The country needs to find another niche for itself. Unfortunately, unskilled workers have no future in this country.

Mak2Pak

On the positive side Carlow has only one way left to go and that is UP! I think the new motorway and Carlow's locality to Dublin will attract thos working in Dublin/Kildare looking for cheaper housing with manageable commute this should help the commercial/retail sector.

Merck owns the whole Carlow IDA business park, so new land needs to be zoned for other multinational companies. When Merck becomes a world class operation, other manufacturing companies will be attracted. There may be 170 jobs with Merck but you can triple/quadruple this when you take into account the supporting jobs (skilled/unskilled) in SME companies that support Merck in Carlow................

Carlow is on the UP!

emick

I watched the documentary on RTE recently regarding the sugar factories and I thought it was excellent. The whole concept of the state getting involved in job creation was forward thinking for Ireland in the 1920's. The arrival of free trade ended finished off the sugar companies but direct state involvement in the creation of manufacturing jobs should be looked at again considering the mess the country is in.