Up to 1,100 jobs are being axed at supermarket giant Tesco as the group confirmed plans to shut its call centre in Cardiff.
Tesco said it was set to close the 11-year-old site in February next year and move the customer services operations to its remaining call centre in Dundee.
The group said 1,100 staff in Cardiff would be affected, although it plans to create 250 jobs at its Dundee office as part of the move.
Matt Davies, UK chief executive of Tesco, said: "The retail sector is facing unprecedented challenges and we must ensure we run our business in a sustainable and cost-effective way, while meeting the changing needs of our customers.
"To help us achieve this, we've taken the difficult decision to close our customer service operations in Cardiff.
"We realise this will have a significant effect on colleagues in the Cardiff area, and our priority now is to continue to do all we can to support them at this time."
Trade union Usdaw said the decision was "devastating" for affected employees.
Nick Ireland, divisional officer of Usdaw, said: "Tesco's Cardiff call centre staff are understandably shocked by the announcement of the company's planned closure.
"This is clearly devastating news for our members and will have a wider impact on South Wales, as so many jobs are potentially lost to our local economy."
Tesco said it would be offering to move some of the affected staff to the Dundee site, where it already has 900 workers.
It will now enter consultation talks with trade unions.
Details of the call centre plans come in a difficult week for Tesco after its home delivery service was hit by a computer glitch on Tuesday, which saw thousands of orders cancelled or postponed.
Up to 10% of all orders were affected nationwide, leaving affected customers furious.
Ken Skates, Welsh Government Economic Secretary, said: "This is devastating news, especially for the workers and their families facing redundancies at Tesco House.
"We will work in close collaboration with Tesco and the major support agencies locally, including Careers Wales, Jobcentre Plus, colleges and the local authority to deliver the best possible support for the workers facing an uncertain future."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here