A WEYMOUTH manufacturing firm has announced it will soon be laying off between eight and ten members of staff.

The managing director of CodaOctopus Martech, Paul Baxter, confirmed on Monday that the company will be making people redundant by early August.

The roles are expected to be lost in administration, production and engineering at the firm which has a workforce of 29.

Mr Baxter said: “Along with many UK companies, we have seen a downturn in business in recent months, and regrettably we have found it necessary to reduce our work force.

“Although we find it very sad to resort to these measures we will continue to employ a significant number of staff and be a competitive business playing an important role in the local community.”

The marine defence company, which is based in Albany Road on the Granby Industrial Estate, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of US firm CodaOctopus Group Ltd.

Martech specialises in electronic, mechanical and software manufacturing and development.

Its parent company, CodaOctopus Martech, also has offices in Edinburgh, Bergen in Norway and Salt Lake City, Ohio.

The announcement of job losses at Martech follows news that Dorset County Council will be making public sector staffing cuts in order to help plug the more than £40million hole in its budget.

Hundreds of healthcare staff in Dorset are also expected to lose their jobs this year in a national health shake-up that will see an end to Primary Care Trusts.

Weymouth College announced last month that nine people would be made redundant by the end of this month, ending months of speculation that up to 35 people at the college could be facing the chop.

Last year also saw a number of job losses in Weymouth and Portland.

In July 2009, Portland engineering firm Ceewrite announced it was going into administration with the loss of 45 local jobs.

In March last year, DEK on the Granby Industrial Estate announced it was to lose 46 posts by the beginning of April.

In February 2009, Park Manufac-turing announced it would axe 18 jobs from its 100-strong workforce and it was also announced last year that the Land Registry in Weymouth would also be losing 30 jobs.

There were also job losses at Weymouth Post Office’s internal shop and at branches of Woolworths in Weymouth and Dorchester.

Dorset Police also axed 50 jobs by the end of December.

And 250 local jobs were also lost after Weymouth-based fashion giant New Look announced it would be relocating staff to London.

n daniel.goater@dorsetecho.co.uk