Bakery manufacturer Bright Blue Foods has proposed the closure of its production facility in Manchester, with 57 jobs at stake.

The manufacturer, formerly known as McCambridge Foods, said the closure was designed to make the best use of its factory footprint and to meet its objectives of building bakery manufacturing ‘centres of excellence’ at its most suitable facilities.

It currently operates bakeries in Manchester, Bradford, Blackburn and Salisbury, as well as Szczecin, Poland, producing a broad range of cakes and pastries for leading retailers.

The Manchester site currently produces slab cake, loaf cakes and Christmas cakes. Production of these lines will transfer to the company’s newly reconfigured Shadsworth bakery in Blackburn, while some of the Christmas cake capability will transfer into its new Decorated Cake Centre of Excellence in Poland.

Sixty people are employed at the Manchester bakery, and the firm said it anticipated there would be 57 job losses.

Andrew Johnson, chief executive, Bright Blue Foods, said: “Bright Blue Foods has reviewed its operational strategy for the next few years. A major objective of the review has been to decide how we make the most effective use of our factory footprint to best meet the future requirements of customers.

“One of our key objectives is that, for our chosen product sectors, we create industry-leading manufacturing centres of excellence in our most suitable facilities.

“We believe the current products produced at Jesse Oldfield will benefit from being transferred into alternative modern facilities where the infrastructure, manufacturing capabilities and product flows have been designed to meet the current and future requirements of our customers.”

Bright Blue Foods revealed its new name and corporate identity in November last year, stating that it “reflects the business’ aspiration to apply fresh thinking and innovative solutions to the cakes and pastries category”.

McCambridge Foods was formed from the acquisition of McCambridge Group’s own-label cake division by NBGI Private Equity, in December 2012.