A HIGHLY successful healthcare business which was sold in a £150m deal earlier this year is moving its corporate headquarters out of the North East.

Attends Healthcare, which makes adult incontinence products and is now owned by Canadian paper industry giant Domtar Corporation, has shifted its UK nerve centre from Newcastle to Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

The firm has shed four jobs in Newcastle but has opened an office in Gateshead, where it employs two people on the financial side of the business.

Attends – winner of several honours in The Journal’s North East Business Awards in recent years – said it opted to move to Yorkshire to be closer to its key customers and because the Newcastle office was too big for the team’s needs.

HR manager Glynis Lloyd said: “It is a positive move for us. We were taken over at the start of the year but this was in the pipeline anyway.

“The decision to relocate to Wakefield will allow us to better service our main customer base which is largely based in the West of Yorkshire, such as Boots and the NHS.”

Although the UK office was based in Newcastle, manufacturing of the company’s products take place in Europe. It has been making incontinence products for around 30 years and supplies government health organisations, pharmacies and private distributor groups across the Continent.