SIX supervisors have been made redundant at a Westhoughton pizza manufacturer.

Wingates-based Stateside Foods Ltd, which was recently sold to a German company, has also closed its Haslingden branch with the loss of 60 jobs.

It is believed the cuts follow a dip in sales of the company's pizzas.

Stateside Foods supplies pizzas to supermarket giants Asda, Safeway, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Morrisons and Somerfield.

The Haslingden site was only reopened a year ago after demand went up by more than 100,000 pizzas a week.

Stateside Foods originally operated from three sites - Westhoughton, Skelmersdale and Haslingden - and employed 750 people.

The company was sold last year to to one of the largest European frozen pizza providers, Freiberger, for an undisclosed sum.

A spokesperson for the Transport and General Workers Union said that the organisation did not have a recognition agreement with Stateside's Westhoughton site, but they had been told that production for the company was being transferred from the Haslingden site to Westhoughton.

Stateside Foods refused to comment.

It was announced last month that 54 jobs are to be axed at the Bernstein Group kitchen furniture company on the same trading estate in Westhoughton.

The job cuts at Bernstein were announced less than a month after a Cheshire-based businessman took over at the firm, promising a "smooth transition."