A North Staffordshire pottery company is using workers from Eastern Europe to overcome a labour shortage in the ceramics industry. Burslem collectibles maker Wade has taken on about 20 agency workers from Poland after a local employment campaign failed to attract the number of shopfloor workers needed to fulfil an upturn in orders.

Other pottery companies confirm they are using agency staff because they are having difficulty filling unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled production positions. And there is evidence North Staffordshire employers are being targeted by Eastern European recruitment agencies following the enlargement of the European Union in May.

Wade, whose ware includes spirit decanters, say an upturn in the global whisky market has led to increased demand this year.

"We have had terrible difficulty getting hold of staff locally, probably because people are leaving the industry," says managing director Paul Farmer. "We haven't set our stall out to hire Polish workers but we made contact with an agency and they have supplied us with workers.

"The Polish guys are fabulous - they are very good and very hard working and they are lovely people who also get on well with everybody."

Currently Wade provides work for up to 40 agency staff, about 20 of whom come from Poland.

Some of the temporary staff carry out kiln work and casting, while others are being trained in fettling.

The slump in the pottery industry has led to membership of potters' union CATU plummeting in size, from 20,000 to 10,000 since 1997, while it is calculated only 20,000 people now work in the Potteries' ceramic industry - compared to 100,000 in the 1960s.

Many displaced pottery workers have been employed in other sectors, and now ceramics firms are having trouble finding new employees.

Last week Sentinel Sunday reported that dozens of people from North Staffordshire had applied for production positions at Devon tile maker BCT.

But Ian Dudson, managing director of the Dudson Group and chairman of the Ceramic Industry Forum, says it is a myth that there are no jobs in the Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry.