Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD) has announced the loss of 70 to 80 jobs across the business due to decline in demand within the offshore renewables, and oil and gas markets.
The news comes as SMD’s largest order in history for two suites of cable laying and burial equipment, has been suspended due to the rejection of an export license as a result of current sanctions in place for Russia, SMD’s press release reads.
SMD stated it would appeal this decision, and that the outcome would have an impact on the final redundancy numbers.
The thirty-day consultation period and necessary paperwork (HR1) will be submitted to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills once the Consultation Committee Group has been established.
This consultation will be carried out fully in accordance with ACAS guidelines and other best practice and will look at alternative cost-saving measures which reduce the number of redundancies, according to SMD.
Andrew Hodgson , CEO of SMD said: “We are very disappointed to be in this situation given the inevitable impact on our colleagues and partners in our supply chain. A number of our key markets are subject to challenges for a variety of largely unrelated issues and we need to react to these challenges in order to sustain the business for the future.”
SMD is a UK-based provider of integrated solutions for remotely operated systems organised across a number of key business streams including work class ROVs, subsea trenching, submerged mining and marine renewables.