THE man whose company has bought Kendal's Parmalat plant said he plans to turn the business around and secure the 190 jobs at the site.

David Dobbin said that the Shap Road Industrial Estate business had been losing money, but that his intention now was to strengthen and even expand the firm.

Mr Dobbin, who is group chief executive of the Dale Farm Group, the Northern Irish dairy company that has bought Parmalat, said that snapping up the Kendal plant gave his business an English base to add to its Northern Irish centre, and Scottish plant.

It will now trade as Dale Farm Kendal Ltd, and staff were assured on Monday that they would be receiving their pay cheques this week.

Mr Dobbin said: "We spoke to them (the staff) on Monday when we took on the business. We are looking to keep the business open, and we are not planning any major job losses.

"The business has been losing money for some time and we intend to turn it around.

"By buying it out of Parmalat we have been able to release it from some of the financial problems. We have got a good workforce, good equipment, good customers, and we have got a lot of the ingredients we need for the business."

Mr Dobbin said any job losses would be likely to be restricted to small numbers and in management, because of possible duplication with Dale Farm's own managers.

He described his view of the future as "cautiously optimistic". He said that the fate of other businesses in Kendal, which had been taken over by larger firms and then eventually lost to the town, would not apply to Dale Farm Kendal.

"The only threat is if we can't get the business to perform," he said.

Mr Dobbin had been monitoring Parmalat's increasingly perilous finances and stepped in to buy the plant last weekend. The financial position of the giant Italian parent company has been in international news headlines for weeks.

The first job was to stabilise the business, he said, and detach it from the Parmalat name, which he said was starting to cause harm.

Shap Road staff would continue with existing yoghurt, dessert and cottage cheese products under the Losely and Lakeland Maid brands, and possibly produce some new lines.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins said that he would be keeping a close eye on the buyout, although it differed from past takeovers when successful local firms had been bought and later shut down.

"This seems on the face of it like very good news as the workers there are now working for a company which is not facing major financial difficulties, and which does actually have specific experience in this sector and within the UK."

Ten of the 18 eastern European workers who had been found to be working illegally at Parmalat have been deported, the Home Office said this week. The remainder would also be deported once documentation was available.