HASBRO IRELAND, the Waterford game and puzzle manufacturer, made a pretax loss of €7.2 million in 2006 after spending €8.5 million on restructuring and redundancies, new accounts show.

Hasbro, which makes Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit board games, blamed higher costs and competition from China when it announced 140 job losses at its Waterford factory in November 2006. The accounts show turnover fell 5 per cent to €24.1 million that year and the €7.2 million loss compared to a restated pretax profit of €804,000 the previous year.

Operating profit declined 27 per cent to €585,000 in 2006 before the restructuring costs. The company had retained losses of €5.7 million at the end of the year.

The company also makes Connect 4, Battleship and Playdoh.

The directors said in their report they were "confident that the company has adequate financial resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future". They said performance was primarily influenced by increased global competition in contract manufacturing and by foreign exchange movements.

The company said the restructuring programme, consisting of job redundancies and changes in work practices, had "achieved strong productivity growth".

Staff numbers had fallen to 413 by the end of 2006 from 548 at the end of 2004, primarily due to cuts in production staff. The salaries bill dropped 3 per cent to €14.7 million in 2006. The firm said when the job losses were announced that the restructuring would preserve the remaining 300 jobs.

Hasbro Ireland's managing director Pat Gilhooly was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The company paid a €63 million dividend to its US parent company from profit reserves of €65 million in December 2005.