More than 50 workers face losing their jobs unless they agree to move to the north of England.

Portslade-based Flexer Sacks, which was founded more than 80 years ago, will be closed down in a month.

It is being shut by its parent company, Scotland-based British Polythene Industries, to cut costs.

Yesterday, Gunter Eickholt, managing director of bpi. industrial, which bought the firm in 1993, arrived at the factory in North Street to enter discussions about the future of the 54 staff.

They face the sack if they refuse to relocate to Stockton on Tees, near Middlesbrough, or Ardeer, near Glasgow.

Mr Eickholt said: "Every effort will be made to find alternative employment either within or without British Polythene Industries.

"This arises from an operational review with-in the bpi. industrial business and will enable a reduction of costs by rationalising three sites into two."

Production of heavy-duty plastic sacks used in the agricultural industry will shift to bpi. industrial's other two sites.

Staff would be offered redundancy if they did not want to relocate within the company.

In February, Flexer Sacks became the 2,500th business to join Sussex Enterprise.

Alan Brooks, marketing director of the group, said the firm's managing director, Mike Kingsbury, had been an enthusiastic member.

He said: "The firm has played an active role since they joined us and I know Mike Kingsbury and his team have worked hard to return the business to a profit."

In 1988, about 70 people lost their jobs after paper sack production was shifted to a sister company in Aintree, leaving the Portslade factory to make plastic sacks.

The firm was founded by James Flexer, who was born in Lithuania and settled in Brighton in 1913 after serving in the Boer War in South Africa.

After the First World War, Mr Flexer, who lived in Portland Avenue, Hove, started to collect empty sacks from greengrocers and flour mills in London.

The scheme grew into a substantial business and he was eventually joined in the business by his three sons, including the eldest, George, who pioneered the use of paper sacks in industry and trade.