In just the last six months more than 4,500 jobs have either gone or are due to go - the equivalent of 15 factories the size of Burberry's Treorchy Division which closed in March with the loss of 300 jobs.

Exclusive research carrried out for Week In Week Out has revealed that the losses cut across all sectors, from automotive to electronics, food processing to textiles and many of the companies said they were moving to Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic. And it is going to continue.

"It's very, very difficult for Wales to compete", says Dr Max Munday, director of the Welsh Economic Research Unit at Cardiff Business School. "Some of the wage costs we are talking about could be 2O/25% of the wage costs here. So it's a real problem."

One such company is Thomson Technicolor in Cwmbran which is now making its last 300 workers redundant. It made DVDs of the most popular films from Disney and Paramount - but now is moving its entire operation to Poland.

The Amicus union has accused the French multinational of putting profit before people. The company says its most modern production facility happens to be in Poland.

Just last November the company won a prestigious prize for manufacturing excellence by the Wales Quality Centre. Its chief executive is David Phillips. "It's particularly disappointing - the award is all about companies in Wales." he says, "I don't think that we are in a position to hold mass manufacture in Wales for the long term future but there are lots of opportunities for manufacturing to stay in Wales - the high end of it, the value-added services, the design, the good technologies."

But for Kevin Cooke, 42, unemployed, a former assembly line worker and one of nearly 600 employees laid off over the last two years, the writing is on the factory wall.

"I have my moments when I think what the hell am I going to do now", he says. "But I don't want to go back to manufacturing because there is no future in it".

In just this decade Wales has lost over 50,000 factory jobs - that's 7,000 a year, the equivalent of two steelworks the size of Port Talbot closing every twelve months.

So Week In Week Out asked the Welsh Economic Research Unit to compile a report for the programme. They predict that over the next five years we can expect to lose as many as 18,000 more manufacturing jobs.

"It's actually becoming quite rapid, quite worrying", says Dr Max Munday. "I think our politicians ought to be a little bit more disturbed about it. These manufacturing jobs are well paid".

The Welsh Assembly Government say that the losses have been absorbed by the rapid growth in service jobs - from insurance companies to call centres.

But at the automotive company Continental Teves, Ebbw Vale's biggest employer, workers despair of the future after the company announced it was moving volume production to Slovakia - and with it hundreds of jobs.

"I don't know what people are going to do", says employee Gerald Evans. "Are they going to home with no wages, just to keep a job? It's just getting worse and worse. Without somebody fighting to keep manufacturing in Wales, I don't know how Wales is going to survive to be honest."