The receivers closed down the Liskeard branch of Farm Industries based at East Taphouse on Friday with the loss of eight local jobs. Branches at Helston, Truro, Wadebridge and Tytherleigh in Devon were also closed, and about 50 people have lost their jobs all told.

The shocked staff, one of whom has been with the company for 20 years, have not received their month's salary and have been informed the government's DTI department will be dealing with the matter.

The receivership brings to an end an association with agricultural business in East Taphouse stretching back past the 1940's when a Mr Carne made farming implements. Mr Capon took over the business and sold out to Farm Industries Ltd in the early 1940's, a company which formed in 1936, having acquired the feeding stuff and fertiliser division of HTP Ltd (Hosken, Trevithick and Polkinghorn).

Mr Gordon Greet, who was branch manager from 1959-1984, recalls that Farm Industries Ltd was sold to F H Burgess in 1977, who moved the business to the Moorswater estate in 1984 but closed it soon after. Burgess later sold out to a new company - Farm Industries, which put back an agricultural base into East Taphouse when they opened a branch in the MST premises only last year. The closure of the company has also meant the loss of the Massey Ferguson franchise.

No one at Farm Industries was available for comment.