Crystal, china maker Waterford Wedgwood collapses

Much of the business was offshore, where it employs 5,800 people, including 1,500 people at a plant in Jakarta, Indonesia, which produces most of the company's ceramics. The majority of its crystal production has been handed to Eastern European subcontractors.
The company employs a work force of 1,900 in Britain,

clipped from news.yahoo.com Waterford Wedgwood PLC, the maker of classic china and crystal, filed for bankruptcy protection languished at just one-tenth of a euro cent AFP/File – File photo shows a Wedgwood china coffee cup under the weight of a 1.6-tonne Jaguar car during a promotional … employs around 7,700 worldwide, is the latest in a burgeoning list of iconic British companies to succumb to the global economic slowdown Wedgwood has been an iconic name in British pottery for 250 years, after its founder Josiah Wedgwood opened the first factory in Stoke-on-Trent, central England, in 1759. It began making bone china in the 19th century. Waterford Crystal traces its lineage to a factory opened in Waterford, southeast Ireland in 1783, although that business failed in the 1850s. The brand was revived by Czech immigrant Miroslav Havel in 1947. Waterford acquired Wedgwood in 1986 buying fellow Stoke-on-Trent ceramics maker Royal Doulton in 2005.