Universal joins manufacturing exodus.

The last major to be manufacturing its own product in the UK, Universal Music, is to exit the sector by selling its Blackburn manufacturing plant to Disctronics.

The major announced to the factory's 320 staff last Thursday afternoon of its intention to sell the plant after 22 years on May 1, subject to a consultation with employees. The move comes just a month after EMI announced it was to close its Swindon CD plant, leaving Universal as the final major with manufacturing facilities in the UK.

Universal Music will enter into a long-term supply agreement with Disctronics for its CDs, positioning the independent as one of the major players in the European market and almost doubling its potential capacity to 240m CDs per year. No redundancies are anticipated, as Disctronics intends to take on all staff.

In a statement, Universal Music International (UMI) senior manufacturing and logistics vice president Cor van Dijk said CD technology is well established and stable, enabling supply to be "safely entrusted" to third-party suppliers. "Coupled with the worldwide availability of CD manufacturing capacity and the considerable investment required to keep pace with new physical formats like SACD and DVD, Universal Music has elected to reduce its European CD manufacturing capacity with the sale of UMI's Blackburn plant to Disctronics," he added.

UMI has a long-term CD supply deal with Cinram, which bought its French CD plant two years ago.

Disctronics group CEO David Mackie says, "The Blackburn plant has an excellent reputation in the industry; it is our intention to increase CD and DVD ...