More job cuts are being made at one of Oxford's oldest engineering firms.

W. Lucy and Company Ltd, based in Walton Well Road, Oxford, has announced up to 20 compulsory redundancies are to be made in its electrical division.

The news comes only weeks after the company announced the closure of its flagship foundry in Thame, with a loss of 130 jobs.

The job cuts at Lucy Castings, a division of W. Lucy based in a modern foundry in Howland Road, Thame, were blamed on financial losses.

The Thame division, which makes cast-iron components for 80 different engineering companies, has been losing more than £1m a year. Staff had transferred to the site five years ago from the canal-side foundry in Jericho, Oxford. But W. Lucy managing director Richard Dick had said the company would continue to operate and employ its 400 workers in Oxford, where it makes electrical switch gear, bought mostly by electrical utility companies.

Mr Dick today insisted that the Oxford job cuts were not related to closure of the Thame operation, but were being made because a particular contract was coming to an end. He said: "It is part of a long-standing programme of relocating the manufacture of a particular product to Dubai.

"The manufacture of this particular product is stopping, as planned, at the end of October." In March, the company's director and general manager Chris Levick asked for staff members to come forward for voluntary redundancies.

Some have already done so, but the company now says up to ten fortnightly paid jobs and ten monthly paid positions are to be declared redundant and will take effect from November 2.

Mr Levick has told staff in a memo that "sympathetic consideration" would be given to those who volunteered for redundancy by tomorrow. Mr Dick, who is the grandson of the man who took over the company at the turn of the last century, refused to comment on whether any further job cuts were expected at the Oxford company, which has been based in the city since 1812.

The Transport and General Workers' Union has been involved in negotiations over redundancy packages with the company, but no-one at the union was available to comment.