Waterford Crystal - New and Old Site Discussion

Sully

Hopes that the Waterford Crystal manufacturing plant could be saved have been dashed.

A receiver - appointed a year ago - has decided to put the 36-acre site at Kilbarry, near Waterford city, on the market, ending any hopes of reviving crystal production there.

The site includes the Waterford Crystal visitor centre, and is valued at between €10m and €20m.

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The rest of Waterford Wedgwood's businesses were sold to a US investment firm last February. The company now produces crystal under the Waterford brand in Germany.

After news of the planned sale, former Waterford Crystal workers have called on the Government to step in and support efforts to resume crystal manufacturing in the city. Jimmy Kelly of the UNITE trade union said some former employees were trying to get a high-end production project going, which the Government should support.

Source: http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0105/waterford.html

Apparently they have at least one overseas buyer interested. Wonder will the WIT take a shot at trying to purchase it, rumours were floating they may.

From the tourism side of things - looks like we wont have anything at all in terms of Crystal in the city unless they organize something fairly fast to keep them going until the new project is completed (if it does go ahead). I think its time we promoted our other tourism features heavily to show that we have more to offer and not to ignore our city. We probably have been a tad reliant on Waterford Crystal to bring in tourism and not promoting our best assets well.

Clano

Sully wrote: »

Source: http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0105/waterford.html

Apparently they have at least one overseas buyer interested. Wonder will the WIT take a shot at trying to purchase it, rumours were floating they may.

From the tourism side of things - looks like we wont have anything at all in terms of Crystal in the city unless they organize something fairly fast to keep them going until the new project is completed (if it does go ahead). I think its time we promoted our other tourism features heavily to show that we have more to offer and not to ignore our city. We probably have been a tad reliant on Waterford Crystal to bring in tourism and not promoting our best assets well.

We will have waterfrord crystal in the town, at least a tourism version, the project on the mall is going ahead soon not sure of timeframe but i can find out. City council are taking the offices and the rest is waterford crystals. But we are only talking months as far as i know

ziedth

Clano wrote: »

We will have waterfrord crystal in the town, at least a tourism version, the project on the mall is going ahead soon not sure of timeframe but i can find out. City council are taking the offices and the rest is waterford crystals. But we are only talking months as far as i know

Its not going to be the same though is it? I mean regardless of how good a job they do down the mall it won't have tye history that the factory has. What are they even going to say on the tour? All this **** was moved here after the main plant went under but it was lovely out there.

Clano

ziedth wrote: »

Its not going to be the same though is it? I mean regardless of how good a job they do down the mall it won't have tye history that the factory has. What are they even going to say on the tour? All this **** was moved here after the main plant went under but it was lovely out there.

I know ziedth but its better than nothing. Id prefer to have that and make it the best we can than have nothing at all

Stupid yanks wont know the difference anyway! :-P

mike65

Who gets the money from the site sale?

foxylad

Clano wrote: »

We will have waterfrord crystal in the town, at least a tourism version, the project on the mall is going ahead soon not sure of timeframe but i can find out. City council are taking the offices and the rest is waterford crystals. But we are only talking months as far as i know

Waterford Crystal on the Mall will have a production facility with 2 furnaces to produce High end crystal (most stuf over €250) - and Failte Ireland are already pushing this in the States & Europe as well as with Cruise Ships.
What we need is people in Waterford to know whats happening and to give a positve spin on it - to come face to face with Tourists and give them a Cead Mile Failte - to go out of their way to show people around

i got a Taxi home on Sunday evening - he was moaning how quiet it was - i said the Students are back next week - he said -fat lot of good they will do - i said the new Waterford Crystal site on the will be great for the City - he went of on a rant - its shot - will look **** - no one will go there - Waterford has nothing - no one will do anything for us - City Council, Chamber, TD's, etc -
on setting out of the cab - i said - Waterford has so much to offer tourists, you just need front line staff like Taxi drivers to create a positive spin on it - not depress every tourist they meet!

ziedth

mike65 wrote: »

Who gets the money from the site sale?

I would imagine it will be divided up the whatever compamnies are owed money by the crystal. Def not the staff anyway.

jayboi

Everything the receiver sells goes to bank of America, they appointed the receiver to recoup some of the money Waterford Crystal owes them. id imagine at the moment the only party realisticly interested in buying the former crystal site is WIT. If WIT buy the site and common sence preveals the parking problems encountered buy local resisdents will be solved once and for all.

Aquos76

jayboi wrote: »

Everything the receiver sells goes to bank of America, they appointed the receiver to recoup some of the money Waterford Crystal owes them. id imagine at the moment the only party realisticly interested in buying the former crystal site is WIT. If WIT buy the site and common sence preveals the parking problems encountered buy local resisdents will be solved once and for all.

That would be one hell of an expensive car park though

abouttobebanned

Aquos76 wrote: »

That would be one hell of an expensive car park though

Would pay for itself in about a thousand years though

jayboi

Aquos76 wrote: »

That would be one hell of an expensive car park though

haha yea well existing vistor center car park would be more than enough to solve all the probems and leave plenty of room for new buildings. Hopfully someone will buy the site soon and it wont be left idle and dilapidated for years like so many other sites in the city.

ziedth

how much would it sell for?

wellbutty

Sully wrote: »

I think its time we promoted our other tourism features heavily to show that we have more to offer and not to ignore our city. We probably have been a tad reliant on Waterford Crystal to bring in tourism and not promoting our best assets well.

Well said Sully, we have some amazing Viking stuff that's still not being shown to its full potential. Will the Woodstown site ever be excavated? The new access road was built in super quick time, tarmac put down just before Christmas.

ziedth wrote: »

Its not going to be the same though is it? I mean regardless of how good a job they do down the mall it won't have tye history that the factory has. What are they even going to say on the tour? All this **** was moved here after the main plant went under but it was lovely out there.

Look at the Guinness tour in Dublin, ok it's on the same site as the plant but the actual tour (the best visitor experience I've been on in this country) shows no production.

ziedth wrote: »

how much would it sell for?

€10-€20million are the figures being touted although this is a snip considering its location and the fact that it's 36 acres.

nkay1985

I wonder would there be any issues with contamination or anything like that on the site?

I wonder will someone with very deep pockets buy it up and hold onto it for a few years.

Before the company collapsed, their plan was to run primarily as a tourism-based enterprise from the site. They were going to build it up with accomodation, restaurants and other amenities and try to work it that way. Obviously, that never came about, but I wonder what will be planned for it now.

It's massive in fairness and there will be significant costs involved in demolition etc. You'd wonder what someone could do with a site that big!

chelloveks

Clano wrote: »

I know ziedth but its better than nothing. Id prefer to have that and make it the best we can than have nothing at all

Stupid yanks wont know the difference anyway! :-P

I'm one of those stupid Yanks, but I agree with you anyway!

merlante

ziedth wrote: »

I would imagine it will be divided up the whatever compamnies are owed money by the crystal. Def not the staff anyway.

If the staff could get as organised for a business venture as they got for their sit in, they could probably get enough capital together to form a company that supplied Waterford Crystal with specialist pieces. I'm not sure what funding, licensing or ownership model the new facility on the Mall will have, but I see no reason why they couldn't do something that ex-workers could buy into.

If not, there are probably 4-5,000 ex-workers minimum between Waterford and Dungarvan. If you could get an average of €1,000 from half of them, you'd have €2.5m, add a few million from the central government and another few million from the bank and other investors and you have a respectable sum of money for developing the ESB site into a fine facility that would have the support of national and local government, Bord Failte and tourism interests and the support of the workers who'd have a decent stake into the business.

There are extremely skilled glass workers, and the most talented of them are capable of doing a job that not very many people can do. Imagine what 20 master craftsmen, handpicked from the past 50 years of workers; and a highly paid design team of, say, 15 workers, producing innovative and beautiful designs in cooperation with the craftsmen. Add 10 world class, proven, salesmen that sell directly to high class department stores, royal families and huge corporations, etc., focussing on commissioned items, and maybe 10 marketers to position the brand. Add another 15 for backoffice staff, 5 executive, and you have a workforce of around 75, maybe kicking off with half that. Doable on this kind of scale.

If you think about, you wouldn't even need the Waterford Crystal brand. You could probably get away with another brand with the name Waterford in it, particularly since it would be made in Waterford. "Deise Crystal from Waterford" or something better. What is the market like for high class, specialist pieces? Waterford Crystal are the only company I've heard of that went there. And guess where the greatest concentration of world class crystal cutters and blowers in the world live? In Waterford (presumably!)

There's a world of potential there. Maybe if the idea could be sold to their union it could get legs, then again, these guys and so used to protesting and complaining you wonder whether they have that gear in them. Might be too capitalist for them. And I sometimes think that the bigger the disaster the more at home they are; they might not like a small, new operation taking the sheen of the total disaster that ended the previous one.

Waterford Crystal never should have been allowed to fail completely. Indigenous industry is priceless in a country that relies on Intels and Dells and Microsofts to stick around to cover up the fact that we have fewer and fewer Irish employers. And none of the profits stay in Ireland, it all goes back to the US.

ziedth

thats a very good model merlante and you raised a good not very well known point with intel etc.

Although in reality and it comes down to the brass tax what the defining moment of such a venture would be wages. It would be impossible to pay mastercrafts men anywhere near the money they were on and i couldn't imagine too many of them willing to work for what kind of wages would be availble.

ToxicPaddy

wellbutty wrote: »

..€10-€20million are the figures being touted although this is a snip considering its location and the fact that it's 36 acres.

Maybe 18 months ago that would have been a snip, but not anymore.. the cost of demolishing the existing buildings, cleaning up the site and prepping it for any new construction would be fairly hefty and I doubt anyone would have the finance available to buy it, prep the site and sell it on as a going concern for development, let alone buy and develop it.

WIT to purchase it would definitely be a good option and maybe a multi-storey car park might be a first option on it to start with and charge an nominal amount, like €1 per hour or €5 per day for students/staff etc.. a covered foot bridge from that to the WIT main site would also help..

After that, just leave the rest partitioned off and boarded up until they get the funds to properly develop it.

Tox

merlante

ziedth wrote: »

thats a very good model merlante and you raised a good not very well known point with intel etc.

Although in reality and it comes down to the brass tax what the defining moment of such a venture would be wages. It would be impossible to pay mastercrafts men anywhere near the money they were on and i couldn't imagine too many of them willing to work for what kind of wages would be availble.

Well even a payroll bill of €2m for 35 people (initially), with 20% overhead (not sure what employment costs are in Ireland per head), that's an average salary of 45+K. You could certainly pay some 60+K. But I mean, to be fair, they have what they're going to get from WC already; if they ever want to work again in something they (hopefully) love, on any kind of basis, this would be pretty much the only chance. Ultimately, you want people who actually like the work. But the money issues should not be insurmountable.

Sully

The plan for the new crystal site, which will be backed by the KPS group, is to create sports related crystal. Also high end stuff like Chandeliers and one off limited editions. KPS will buy and market under crystal brand. 40k pieces will be created in the plant each year starting with 100 employees growing to 500 over a few years.

Company will be called Prestige Crystal. Next year it will be up and running apparently.

The whole Waterford Crystal issue is being discussed on Radio 1 now.

MassDeb8r

WIT will probably buy it and extend the college or hopefully build some brand spanking new sports fields, gyms and paintball arenas

merlante

Sully wrote: »

The plan for the new crystal site, which will be backed by the KPS group, is to create sports related crystal. Also high end stuff like Chandeliers and one off limited editions. KPS will buy and market under crystal brand. 40k pieces will be created in the plant each year starting with 100 employees growing to 500 over a few years.

Company will be called Prestige Crystal. Next year it will be up and running apparently.

The whole Waterford Crystal issue is being discussed on Radio 1 now.

Interesting. Well I think 500 was the maximum number of employees that WC should have had for the past 10 years anyway to remain viable. Hopefully the workers will buy themselves in to this. Will KPS own 100% of it? Would be nice if the company could produce under another brand or for other companies, or direct to the customer, if they so chose.

Still, this is not a 'mickey mouse' operation as one WC union representative cynically referred to it.

Clano

MassDeb8r wrote: »

WIT will probably buy it and extend the college or hopefully build some brand spanking new sports fields, gyms and paintball arenas

Like the ones in carrignore???

Psychedelic

The new place on the Mall will be open in May, in time for the tourist season.

The City Manager Michael Walsh was on TV3 News earlier, briefly, talking about plans for the new site.

Watch it here: http://www.tv3.ie/news.php

jayboi

MassDeb8r wrote: »

sports fields, gyms and paintball arenas

paintball arenas? plural? hardly a absolute nessatiety when plan a college extention for one or more although id imagine the bi empty sores out there would ideal for one. I heard some time ago and i stand to be corrected on this some land could be contaminated due to lead leaking into the ground and could be extreamly expnsive to treat but that story could be related to the the hole maxol leakage/aldi story.

stephenc1979

I heard that about the contamination aswell,but I think it was at the back of the site, not where the showrooms are..

manus30

MassDeb8r wrote: »

WIT will probably buy it and extend the college or hopefully build some brand spanking new sports fields, gyms and paintball arenas

hopefully they will build some squash courts too. squash players in waterford were left homeless when delasalle center closed. some moved to celtic squash club but conditions there are terrible. some top players in the country are from waterford, they deserve somewhere decent to play....

jayboi

i wonder would the waterford gaa be interested as a possible replacement for Walsh Park?

Sully

Up goes the For Sale sign. In good news, the new site is being demolished as I type this. Well, internally first is how its usually done

BlaasForRafa

Sully wrote: »

Up goes the For Sale sign. In good news, the new site is being demolished as I type this. Well, internally first is how its usually done

Hang on a sec, is it the old Esb building that its going to be in? And if so just how extensive will this "demolishing" be?

Cabaal

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Hang on a sec, is it the old Esb building that its going to be in? And if so just how extensive will this "demolishing" be?

Hopefully the whole bloody building....atleast one could hope

Its an eye sore