THE accountantancy firm KPMG has been appointed to find a rescue buyer for the porcelain manufacturer Royal Worcester.

The company, which was established in 1751 and received its royal warrant in 1789, is the latest in a long line of heritage brands that have got into difficutly during the credit crunch.

Shares in Hardy Amies, the Queen’s dressmaker for more than 30 years, were suspended on Friday after the firm warned it could be forced into administration.

In July, The General Trading Company, which ran the wedding list for the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall’s 2005 wedding and has a number of royal warrants, collapsed into administration following a suspected downturn in trade as a result of the credit crisis.

Royal Worcester, which sells ranges by the interior designer Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and television chef Jamie Oliver, first ran into difficulty after it merged with rival ceramics company Spode during the late 1970s.

Despite being the third-largest fine-china manufacturer in the UK behind Wedgwood and Royal Doulton, the company faced problems as cheaper competition from abroad increased and people’s tastes in tableware changed.

It was bought by Guernsey-based accountant Alan Finden-Crofts and New York lawyer Ed Gottesman from London International – a maker of condoms and medical products – in the late 1980s, when they also took over Raleigh bikes.

In 2005 Finden-Crofts, a former chief executive of Dunlop Slazenger sports, took control of the business with a $23m (£12.5m) management buyout that was backed by three US investors who own the remainder of the business.

Finden-Crofts has tried to cut costs in the last decade by moving workers from Worcester to lower-cost locations abroad and in the UK.

Some 1,000 people were employed at the company’s Worcester factory during its heyday but the last production workers left in 2006.

The group’s Scottish subsidiary, Caith-ness Glass, fell into administration in 2004.

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