Procter & Gamble International Headquarters, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, where on April 12, 1837, William Procter and James Gamble began making and selling soap and candles.

Update: Procter & Gamble to cut 280 jobs in Ireland; Skincare production to move to Poland

The 500 workers at the Procter & Gamble plant in Nenagh, County Tipperary, are due to learn their fate this morning at a meeting of all staff that has been scheduled by the company.

The Nenagh plant, makes products sold under the Hugo Boss, Oil of Olay and Max Factor brand names for the global consumer products giant, which was reported last month to have agreed to invest 157 million zlotys ($53.08 million) in a cosmetics factory in central Poland. The  Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported that the factory should open in 2008 in Aleksandrow Lodzki, a small city, and employ 200 people.

A US spokesman for the company said that up to 300 workers will be laid off in Nenagh.

Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Ireland) Limited, made a profit before tax of €7.6 million on a turnover of €52.4 million in the tear to June 2005. The manufacturing company received interest of €912,344 in relation to a loan to a group company.

Procter & Gamble Holdings Limited, which had no direct staff made a profit of $633.4 million in 2005. Another company, Procter & Gamble Investments Limited reported a profit of $519 million.

The profit of $1.1 billion likely relates to the use of Ireland as a tax haven for channelling profits from other overseas operations.

The company has been in Nenagh since 1985 when the Richardson Vicks factory was acquired. In 1992, an extension was added to the plant for the production of cosmetics and in 1999, following uncertainty about a European rationalisation programme,  the Government approved support from IDA Ireland for a €27m (£21m) expansion programme to bring the headcount to 600 employees at the plant that was to become the group’s European centre for skincare products.