US food giant Heinz has confirmed 71 jobs are to go at its Kitt Green site in the UK.

The baked beans factory near Wigan is undergoing a restructure, with some of the current processes being automated.

"As part of our on-going drive to increase competitiveness and improve our efficiency we are investing in projects to automate the movement of finished goods from the production line and also to further optimise our can making operations and ways of working," a spokesperson told just-food.

"In parallel we also recently secured funding for a number of voluntary redundancies for non-management operations employees as well as factory based non-management distribution centre employees. This has resulted in a reduction of 71 roles through voluntary redundancy at the site."