Up to 60 former Waterford Crystal back office staff have been re-employed by the company’s new owner to source and purchase glass for sale under the world famous brand name.
Based at a premises on the Cleaboy Business Park, the workers are engaged in the fields of IT, quality assurance, procurement planning and sales. About 40 of these workers are understood to have been given permanent contracts by WWRD Holdings Limited – a company formed by KPS Capital Partners when the New-York based private equity firm bought certain assets and businesses of the Waterford Wedgwood Group earlier in the year. A further 20 or so employees received contracts lasting a couple of months.
There had been hopes last January, when KPS bought the Waterford Crystal name, that the firm would retain all back office staff but this optimism faded as rumours circulated that those jobs would be moved to the UK. However Walter Cullen of trade union UNITE told The Munster Express that the company had opted to retain the Waterford workers because of their ‘many years of skills and expertise’.
