STAFF at printing firm York Direct have been approached to take voluntary redundancy after many jobs were saved in a buy-out last weekend, it was claimed today.

As reported in the Evening Press on Tuesday a deal was struck at midnight on Saturday to hand Elvington-based York Direct over to new owner York Mailing Limited.

A worker at the factory, who wished to remain anonymous, said a letter had gone up at the factory asking for voluntary redundancies.

He said people were concerned for their jobs especially if not enough people came forward and compulsory redundancies resulted.

Donald Place, joint branch secretary of the GPMU union, confirmed that a letter had been put on the noticeboard at the factory requesting people to come forward for voluntary redundancy.

He said no exact job figures had been released but he believed the job losses to be a dozen.

He described the number of job losses as fairly good news. "We were expecting more redundancies and obviously if there had not been a buyer at the last minute everybody would have lost their jobs.

"As it stands it looks like a dozen jobs will go and hopefully they will be filled voluntarily."

He said that had a deal not been done last weekend, receivers would have made the whole workforce at York Direct redundant.

York Mailing was launched 18 months ago at its current site, a 22,000 square foot building at Alexandra Court trade retail park, in James Street, York.

It employs 60 people whose jobs, the company pledged, were safe.

Mike Newbould, chairman of York Mailing, was today unavailable for comment.

York Mailing is a mail print firm which prints and packages envelopes for the direct mail market, while York Direct prints and binds literature for the same market.

More than 100 workers are employed at the firm and prior to the weekend, they said they were "worried and depressed" about their futures there.

York Direct, which is based at the Elvington Airfield Business Park, began life about ten years ago with just a handful of workers but has rapidly expanded to the point where it employed more than 100 staff.