UK-based own-label baker Bright Blue Foods is to close its plant in Manchester in a bid to have a more “effective” production network.

The company, the renamed former private-label cake business of McCambridge Group, said it wants to build “bakery manufacturing centres of excellence”.

Production at the Manchester site, which employs 60 staff, will move to its bakery in Shadsworth in Blackburn and a second site in Poland. 

Bright Blue, owned by NBGI Private Equity, said the move would see it cut 57 jobs.

Chief executive Andrew Johnson said: “Bright Blue Foods has reviewed its operational strategy for the next few years. A major objective of the review has been to decide how we make the most effective use of our factory footprint to best meet the future requirements of customers. One of our key objectives is that, for our chosen product sectors, we create industry-leading manufacturing centres of excellence in our most suitable facilities.”

Johnson said the products made in Manchester would “benefit from being transferred into alternative modern facilities where the infrastructure, manufacturing capabilities and product flows have been designed to meet the current and future requirements of our customers”.

The closure will leave Bright Blue with three UK sites, in Bradford, Blackburn and Salisbury, plus a fourth in the Polish town of Szczecin.