Think i have just found the problem and its not as horrible as i first thought.

The problem was that the application is looking for the plugin's satellite assemblies in the same de-DE/whatever folder as the base application, NOT in the folder relative to the plugin.
So if i manually move the satellite dll into /APPROOT/de-DE/ for example it works!
Excelent.

Now... does anyone know either of a way to force the application to load the satellite assembly from the relative folder to the plugin dll OR does anyone know a quick easy way to have VS2008 put those dlls in the correct folder instead of a new folder relative to the dll?

Thanks