Eighteen members of Swindon’s 80-strong workforce have accepted temporary positions in Slough while the company evaluates the level of manpower that the move will necessitate at the site.
Meanwhile around 40% of the original staff remain at Swindon, which produces high-end CD and DVD packaging, as it works towards closure at the end of the month.
The company began a review of its UK operations at the end of last year and in January carried out a 30-day consultation with Swindon staff.
Tony Garnish, chief executive of ASG, Europe, told PrintWeek that a "sensible" rescue plan could not be found.
He said: "The commercial print market has become an incredibly tough environment and that combined with decline in the physical media sector has affected many printing plants.
"Sadly one of them is ours in Swindon and we have done our best to help staff find other opportunities through outplacement services."
Garnish said that a small amount of production would continue at Swindon over the next couple of weeks after which time ASG would either sell or redeploy the plant machinery.
He added: "The equipment was very old and expensive to replace in an environment where we see continued decline so we have had to figure out a way that we could continue to support our customers but in a more cost effective and profitable way."
Garnish said he expected to lose around £3m worth of Swindon’s £8m annual revenue as a result of the decision to close the facility. "This kind of change will cause some customers to move elsewhere while some work we will not continue to do because it is simply unprofitable," he explained.
The company will sell a range of saddle-stitchers and folders from the facility, which will be used for storage purposes until the lease expires in 2014, along with two of its three five- and six- colour litho presses, while one will be moved to ASG’s Dublin operation.
Meanwhile a 10-colour perfector will be moved to Slough from Dublin to meet the new workload.
Moving forward Garnish said that the prospects for the £20m plus-turnover Slough operation were good, with continuing production for the physical media market and a new sales team focussing on diversifying in high-end, non-media consumer packaging, such as personal care products, in the UK and across Europe.
"We still have a major involvement in the media market," he added. "We will make our Slough facility a more multi-product plant so that we can meet our customers' needs."
Swindon's closure comes around 14 months after ASG closed its Ebbw Vale, South Wales plant following the group's creation in January 2012 from the merger of global packaging firms AGI World and US-based Shorewood Packaging.
Under the terms of the merger, AGI’s owner, private equity house Atlas Holdings, acquired 100% of the combined AGI-Shorewood in the US and 60% of its overseas business, while International Paper, Shorewood Packaging’s parent company, took over the remaining 40% interest in AGI-Shorewood outside the US.
ASG employs around 4,000 people worldwide manufacturing sites across the Americas, Europe and Asia as well as creative offices in London, Paris and Sydney.
In the UK and Europe alone ASG employs around 1,000 people, generating an annual turnover of around €220m. Facilities include packaging manufacturing sites in Slough, Dublin, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland and injection moulding sites in the UK and Germany.
