HKScan to cut staff in bid to reduce costs
According to the business, all 1,200 ‘white-collar’ employees, senior white-collar employees, and management in all HKScan’s operating countries will be examined while ‘blue-collar’ employees are outside the scope of the negotiations. Personnel working at the Rauma unit in Finland are also mostly excluded from the negotiations.
Decisions on the redundancies are expected to be made during the first half of 2019.
“During the recent years, HKScan’s competitiveness has been continuously weakening,” said Tero Hemmilä, CEO of HKScan. “Our current approach isn’t reflecting, from neither an agility nor a cost competitiveness point of view, the market needs. To strengthen our competitive position in the industry, we must definitely improve the cost-efficiency of our operations and seek new ways of working to meet our customers’ expectations and consumer needs in our home markets. Through the planned changes we aim to build a more solid foundation for the future and for the development of the company.”
As well as the 220 jobs on the line, the company is assessing the way of working in its Categories & Concepts function. The aim is to increase the company’s agility to respond more competitively to its customers’ needs in local markets.
With these planned actions HKScan aims to achieve group-wide annual savings of €10m, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. The planned actions will be a part of HKScan´s Group-wide €40m efficiency improvement programme.
In its fourth quarter results, it posted net sales of € 1,715.4m, down from €1,808.1m in the previous year, the reduction in sales were attributed to the “challenges related to the Rauma unit launch”.
Looking ahead, the business said global meat consumption is projected to increase during the coming years. Within HKScan’s home markets, consumption growth is estimated to be led by poultry and meal categories, while demand in other categories is expected to remain stable. HKScan expects its improvement programmes and other corrective actions to start recording results in 2019.
