“It’s knocked us sideways,” he says. “Before this, we had quite a good order book, with three to four months of work planned, so we were pretty worried where it was going to take us.” At first he was worried about how he would keep Q-Mass’ 47 staff on the payroll, but then the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme was announced.
It offers UK Government support to pay 80% of staff’s wages – up to £2,500 a month – and the scheme has been extended until the end of October.
Q-Mass manufactures bespoke parts for the oil, gas and defence industry so staff training is important. “Our staff are very highly skilled,” says Ronnie, 54. “We’ve gathered a bunch of people here and trained them up and taken on apprentices.
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