Planned sale of crystal plant ends production revival hopes

WATERFORD CRYSTAL’S manufacturing plant is to be sold, ending any hope of reviving production there.

A year ago today, a group of international banks appointed receiver, David Carson of Deloitte Ireland, to the crystal manufacturer’s parent, Waterford Wedgwood, which had failed to make an €8.2 million interest payment a month earlier.

Mr Carson sold the company’s businesses, but not its manufacturing plant in Waterford, to US investment firm KPS Capital, which is now producing crystal under the Waterford brand in east Germany.

The receiver is planning to sell the 38-acre site at Kilbarry, just to the west of Waterford city. The property is likely to fetch somewhere between €10 million and €20 million, according to some estimates.

The site has “industrial opportunity” zoning and is close to main roads and Waterford city centre. Savills in Cork is handling the deal, and it is understood that at least one overseas buyer is interested in bidding for it.

When KPS took over Waterford Wedgwood’s assets last year, it bought the Waterford Crystal brand, but not the manufacturing operation.

A group of local business people and workers were hoping to raise money independently to revive crystal manufacturing at Kilbarry. KPS signalled at the time that it would be willing to buy products from such an operation “at the right price”.

Over 700 workers, over 400 of them involved in manufacturing, lost their jobs in Waterford Crystal, which was one of the region’s biggest employers. Currently, there are about 30 people working in the city in sales and marketing support for Waterford Crystal, and a further 20 in a visitors’ centre at Kilbarry.

Local interests still intend developing a new visitors’ centre in the city itself, but it is not clear if there are any plans to revive crystal production. The plant’s furnace, which was switched off within days of the KPS deal’s completion last March, would be central to resurrecting manufacturing there. Restarting the existing one, or developing a new one, would require a seven-figure investment.

Waterford Wedgwood owed €166 million to a group of international banks that held its bonds, when Mr Carson took over. The company’s board, including its chairman and biggest shareholder, Sir Anthony O’Reilly, had spent the previous three months seeking new investment. It failed to bring off a €150 million fundraising from existing shareholders, and then sought €74 million from new backers, but none of the financial institutions with which it held talks agreed to invest.

Mr O’Reilly and his brother-in-law, Peter Goulandris, invested €400 million between them in the company.

Waterford Wedgwood had operations in Ireland, Britain, Germany and eastern Europe. The sale of the Waterford site would signal the end of Mr Carson’s receivership.