More than one quarter of the 360 jobs at the Irish Glass Bottle plant at Ringsend in Dublin are in danger as part of a major cost-cutting programme being implemented by the glass bottle manufacturer's parent company, Ardagh.

Ardagh chief executive, Mr Eddie Kilty, said that discussions on the cutbacks had begun with SIPTU, the union representing the glass bottle workers. But he added that Ardagh would be looking for 90-100 redundancies at Ringsend to help the group combat difficult market conditions and the overcapacity in the European glass bottle market.

Plans for the cost-cutting programme were included with Ardagh's second interim results - the group has changed its year-end from June to December and the next set of figures will be for the 18 months to the end of next December. The 12-month figures to the end of June include a three-month contribution from Rockware, the British glass bottle group acquired last March for £283 million (€359 million) in a move that quadrupled the Irish group's size.

The impact of Rockware for three months is shown in the figures, where turnover more than doubled from €51.1 million to €107 million (£84.27 million) while operating profits showed a similar increase, climbing from €7.5 million to €15.4 million (£12.13 million).

The impact of Rockware is also evidenced in the interest charge which rose from €1.7 million in the year to June 1998 to €4.2 million in the most recent 12-month period.

But the level of debt associated with the Rockware acquisition - a total of £184 million sterling emphasises the need for Ardagh to operate with the maximum cost efficiency. Ardagh did get a once-off €3.1 million exceptional profit on the disposal of a property and without this, pre-tax profits would have fallen instead of rising from €9.2 million to €12.6 million (£9.92 million). Earnings per share rose from 23 cents to 27.8 cents (22p), while a second interim dividend of 5.78 cents per share is being paid.

Mr Kilty said that the results were fractionally below plan - "about 1 or 2 per cent", but were a creditable performance in very difficult market conditions.

He said that there was overcapacity of between 4 per cent and 5 per cent in the European glass bottle industry, and that while some capacity had been closed in the UK, the level of overcapacity was unlikely to be fully corrected in the short term.