By Harry Mottram: One of the UK’s most famous firms has entered administration with little hope of finding a buyer or of staff and suppliers being paid. With a history dating back more than 200 years Royal Stafford in Burslem is known for its cream-coloured earthenware and tableware but has seen orders all but dry up. It’s also on the UK manufacturers that doesn’t outsource to contractors abroad. Stoke-on-Trent is known for its which once created thousands of jobs in the area due to readily available deposits of clay and other materials, good transport links from canals to motorways and finally coal mines in Staffordshire which produced the fuel to fire the kilns. Royal Stafford is the latest pottery to close after Dudson collapsed five years ago and Johnsons Tiles in 2024 also closed.
The reasons for the crisis in the potteries in what Arnold Bennett described in his novels The Five Towns is a mixture of reasons from cheaper imports, higher energy costs, changing tastes in tableware and hikes in interest rates which have added to debt repayments. The closure saw the 83 staff fired unceremoniously as without warning they were told on the tannoid system to go home as redundancy letters were handed out. Robert Morley of the GMB union told the BBC: “I wasn’t working that day. But I got a phone call that said everyone’s been told to get their stuff and get home. They could have let us know, but we got nothing. No information, nothing. We knew we was struggling, but for the receivers to go and to shut the gates – terrible. I jumped in my car and drove straight up there. But by the time I got there, a lot of the members had gone.”
ICSM understands that the staff were left without the last two weeks of pay meaning they would need to claim statutory redundancy pay through the receiver from the Government. Ian Carrotte of ICSM said it was no way to treat staff and he said it did not bode well for suppliers. He said: “The pottery industry has been in decline for decades but there are new markets for the business and traditional manufacturers like Royal Stafford failed to diversify. They were also squeezed by accumulating costs from everything from a bad Brexit deal, to higher transport and fuel costs to the autumn budget which pushed up staffing costs.”
A Royal Stafford spokesman said: “It is with great sadness that the directors announce the closure of RST Limited, which trades as Royal Stafford, with immediate effect. The company has faced a dramatic reduction in orders in recent months and coupled with the increase in energy prices this has left it unable to afford to continue to trade. The company has traded as a manufacturer and retailer of tableware from its Burslem factory since 2007, when its current owners bought the business and assets of Royal Stafford Tableware Limited.”
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ICSM, The Exchange, Express Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater, Somerset TA6 4RR. Tel: 0844 854 1850. www.icsmcredit.com. Ian.carrotte@icsmcredit.com