º£½ÇÊÓƵ

An extra 140 jobs lost through the collapse of Unipart Automotive have been saved after they were taken on by a Solihull-based rival.

More than 1,200 people were made redundant when Birmingham Business Park-based

At the time, Solihull-based The Parts Alliance and its associate member Andrew Page announced they would rescue 360 positions by buying 33 Unipart Automotive branches but this figures has now risen to around 500.

Peter Sephton, chief executive of The Parts Alliance, said: "It has been sad to see the decline and demise of Unipart Automotive. We have worked hard to interview and re-employ close to 500 talented individuals whose great experience and skills will benefit The Parts Alliance and our customers.

"Those re-employed include people at all levels, from senior members of the national accounts team and regional directors to parts advisors, branch managers, business and operations specialists.

"We take great care to allow prospective colleagues to understand us and our values and get to know them.

"All too often I see employers making knee-jerk reactions and false promises, offering jobs to people they have never seen or who have never seen and evaluated them. These are people’s lives we are dealing with and it impacts their communities and families, so we owe it to all our colleagues to be open and transparent."

Unipart Automotive, which also traded under the Partco Autoparts and Express Factors brands, and  employed 1,813 people when it called in administrators in July.

Mark Orton, Will Wright and Jonny Marston from KPMG were appointed joint administrators and secured the deal with The Parts Alliance and Leeds-based Andrew Page, which bought 21 branches including the sites in Walsall, Stafford and Shrewsbury.

The Parts Alliance's distribution network now stands at 278 branches across the º£½ÇÊÓƵ and Ireland.

Among the Unipart Automotive branches to close were two in Birmingham and others in Brierley Hill, Coventry, Hub West Midlands, Kidderminster, Redditch, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Worcester. These sites employed 113 staff collectively. The collapse was.

This week on the free Birmingham Post iPad and iPhone app: Three weeks of outdoor festivals in Birmingham; Midlands artists at Edinburgh Fringe; Interview with Joan Armatrading; Great British Bake Off and Post Property as well as daily breaking news.