Car parts giant Unipart is to shed 300 Jobs at its Cowley plant - just a month after reporting losses of £111m.

Four weeks ago, the company blamed its poor performance on the acquisition of Partco parts company, but insisted the 2,000 jobs at the Cowley plant were safe.

Now 15 per cent of the jobs there are to disappear.

The company insisted that the lost jobs amounted to just three per cent, but that figure applies to the company nationwide.

Unipart bought Partco two years ago for £179m, but had to write off £156m of 'goodwill' because the subsidiary company under-performed.

Yesterday, Unipart confirmed to the Oxford Mail it had been forced to cut its staff by 450 - the remaining 150 losses being workers on fixed-term contracts at its Honeybourne plant, near Coventry.

Mangers said that after losing the contracts to be the main parts suppliers to Rover and BMW four years ago, the total number of job losses could have been as high as 1,500 had they not created a new business portfolio of clients in various industries.

Jobs will be phased out between December and the first half of next year, but the firm is already trying to find staff employment elsewhere.

Unipart corporate affairs director Frank Nigriello said there would be a three-month consultation process and Unipart had set up a support and re-employment centre.

He said: "Obviously, we take this seriously, but it's a managed process and we've equipped our employees as well as we can to find redeployment elsewhere within the market and within the group as a whole."