FrieslandCampina is to make deeper cuts into its workforce than it forecast when announcing its creation from a merger last year as it axes six butter, cheese and yoghurt plants.
The dairy co-operative, formed from a tie-up of Friesland Foods and Campina, said it planned to shed 942 jobs in drive to enable efficiency gains allowed by merging the Netherlands' top two milk producers.
Even factoring in the 318 posts that will be created in plants that take on operations ditched from the closed sites, the job losses are more severe than the 500 announced when the merger was unveiled in April last year.
They also come in addition to the 420 posts in operations that European Union regulators forced FrieslandCampina to put up for sale to satisfy concerns that the merger should not allow the group a stranglehold over Belgian and Dutch dairy markets.
'Efficiency improvements'
The co-operative said that its German operations would suffer the bulk of the job losses, with 473 of 2,200 staff to go, while most of the posts would be created in Belgium and the Netherlands.
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Balance of FrieslandCampina job cuts (-) and creation (+) by country
Belgium: -63, +103
Germany: -473, +97
Hungary: +7
Netherlands: -405, +111
Source: FrieslandCampina |
"The aim of the proposed reorganisation of the production is to reduce costs further by means of an increase in scale and efficiency improvements," Cees 't Hart, the FrieslandCampina chief executive, said.
"We will do all we can to help the employees who are losing their jobs to find a new job either at FrieslandCampina or outside the organisation."
The co-operatives said when their deal was announced that the tie-up would reap benefits of E175m a year through cost cuts by 2012, although that announcement came before the EU disposals order
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