End of an era,Johnnie Walker is moving out.

shelovestobuystuff

Shocking news on TV yesterday.Diagio,s Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock is closing with 700 job losses.I can imagine what this will do to the town,I just hope they get first choice of relocating for jobs in the new expanded plant in Leven.All those families, some with generations of the same family working there.The Leven plant will only have 400 new job.
This move is to centralise production for a global market apparantly.Well the whisky has been managing to get all over the world perfectly well from Kilmarnock for 200 years or so.
Does anyone know what is to happen with the current factory when it closes.I am hoping that at least they make part of it a Johnnie Walker museum or something like that.
Bit ironic that in the year of the Homecoming one of the biggest names in Scottish modern history is to be moving house.Okay its still in Scotland but its just not the same.

scotsbob

shelovestobuystuff wrote: »

.Well the whisky has been managing to get all over the world perfectly well from Kilmarnock for 200 years or so.
.

Really?? Well it isn't sold in any of the three major supermarkets in the town.
The Kilmarnock branches of Tesco, Morrisons and Asda don't sell Johnny Walker. If theyc can't manage to market their product in their home town no wonder they are moving.

Anyone who has tried to drive down Hill St at 4.30 of an afternoon will be delighted to see the back of all the double parked cars and heavy goods lorries.

Prime site for some nice flats I would say.

goldspanners

shelovestobuystuff wrote: »

I just hope they get first choice of relocating for jobs in the new expanded plant in Leven..

i would be happier with a nice pay off rather than commute from kilmarnock to leven, every day.thats at least a 180 mile round trip per day.
im sure there are plenty of folk in fife who are happy to hear of this news.

flyingscotno1

It will kill Kilmarnock. Killie will be a 'commuter' town for Glasgow, with most folk heading up the M77 to Paisley, East Kilbride or Glasgow in the morning.

Heck Killie Town Centre is dying, so sad, I've been a couple of times, including just before Christmas and it was a shadow of years gone by- same as Paisley and other places- folk just jump up to Silverburn and Braehead ior down to Ayr.

scotsbob

flyingscotno1 wrote: »

Heck Killie Town Centre is dying.

You got that one right mate.

The local council's idea of town planning was to allow developers to dictate to them, so there are no local shops in the centre any more.

Traffic has come to a standstill because the council made a profit out of EU money putting in cycle lanes (they even put cycle lanes in car parks) and then they installed parking meters on every stretch of road.

Now they wonder why people have stopped shopping there.

To cap it all, as I mentioned in a prevous post, none of the local supermarkets stock Johnny Walker whisky.

I watched a football match there about 18 months ago and Inverness Caley had more away supporters than Kilmarnock had home supporters.

ailuro2

My DH is from Killie, he was gutted to hear this sad news, Johnnie Walker was always seen as a good job to get, was well paid but no degree required for many of the jobs.

Maybe it'll be just another block of posh flats that folk working in Glasgow can afford to buy, it's just over the road a bit from the train station irrc, so it will be within the magic '5 min walk to station'

We're visiting Kilmarnock in a few weeks, I've not been for a while but the town centre was already poor, only High Street type shops, nothing individual and nothing special to keep people shopping there. Even when you go off up the side streets it's all cheap shops ( no bad thing!) but it needs a few higher end shops too to get the right folk in.

In saying that, we got our dining table from the furniture shop near the bottom end of John Finnie street, was the only place we could find a match for our cherry wood kitchen doors. That definitely wasn't a cheap shop!! Is it still there? The name escapes me...

baldelectrician

I noticed they sited 'infrastructure probelms' as a reason to move out.

They may be using this as an angle to get some public cash towards a nearby relocate to a greenfield site.

I also noticed the local MP (Labour) on the news pinning the blame on the SNP adminstration in Edinburgh- poor show, very unprofessional.

I hope they don't close, the town wouldn't be the same. End of an era

shelovestobuystuff

Dont mean to be argumentative scotbob but tesco always stock the black label,dont know about the other supermarkets as I dont shop there.

shelovestobuystuff

If infrastructure is their excuse its a poor one.Their premises are right next to the train station ,in fact they used to transport everything using rail and I think they have their own line into the yard(unused for many years since they started using trucks instead for transporting it)and Kilmarnock couldnt be better for motorway access.Their haulage company have trains too so they could just switch to rail freight instead since they are so well placed for it.I cant see how Leven is better in that way?
Fingers crossed there is a plan to keep it in Kilmarnock.If not then buy up the bottles with kilmarnock printed on the labels they will become rare.

mhagster

ailuro2 wrote: »

In saying that, we got our dining table from the furniture shop near the bottom end of John Finnie street, was the only place we could find a match for our cherry wood kitchen doors. That definitely wasn't a cheap shop!! Is it still there? The name escapes me...

The shop is called Tannahills and yes it's still here!

julie_scot

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/save-johnnie-walkers-link-to-kilmarnock/sign.html

If interested in helping - please sign the online petition.