MORE than 40 staff were made redundant as a Hampshire contact lens manufacturer streamlined its operation.

CooperVision has switched some of its production of the disposable lenses from its plant at Fareham to Hamble and a factory in Hungary.

The firm says more than 130 staff have been redeployed from the former Sauflon factory at Delta Park.

US owned Coopervision issued a statement to the Echo which said: “In order to sustain an efficient, effective and competitive manufacturing base, we have addressed some minimal areas of duplication between our facilities and transferred manufacturing from our Fareham facility to other existing sites in Hamble and Budapest, Hungary. As a result we are deploying over 130 employees from our Fareham facility to our Hamble site and anticipate a smooth transition during the next few months with no impact on the service we provide for our customers.”

A spokesman for the firm confirmed that 43 former Sauflon staff had taken redundancy – 39 of them voluntarily.

Coopervision bought Sauflon for £700million in 2014.

Sauflon was founded by optician Alan Wells who started his business with one shop in Twickenham and built it into a giant firm with factories in the UK and Hungary within a decade.

Mr Wells moved into disposable contact lenses in the late 1990s when the industry had a breakthrough with development of more comfortable silicone hydrogel lenses.

Sauflon was a market leader in the production of disposable lenses and its factory at Fareham produced more than 100 million each year.

CooperVision Manufacturing Ltd is among the top 25 largest companies in Hampshire with a turnover of £154million in 2015, which was down by £2.5m on the previous year. It has its UK head office in Fareham where 550 are employed, 2,000 are employed at its Hamble factory and another 150 in research and development in Chandler’s Ford.

CooperVision, the world’s third largest contact lens company, was founded in 1980. It is part of The Cooper Companies, a global medical device company, which has its HQ in Pleasanton, California. The group has more 9,000 employees and sells products in more than 100 countries.