Clariant Cuts Staff at Two Swiss Facilities

14 June 2004 00:01  [Source: ICB Americas]

Clariant is eliminating 250 to 280 jobs at its plants at Muttenz and Reinach in Switzerland as part of its program to reduce its global work force by 4,000.

The cut in staff at the Swiss sites will involve around 100 redundancies, while the remainder will be achieved by natural attrition and through early retirements. The entire reduction will be completed by the end of 2005.

Clariant’s Swiss-based operations have suffered a 25 percent decline in sales in recent years combined with a sharp drop in profits, mainly because of global trends in textiles.

Clariant says that the Muttenz plant, which is heavily dependent on textile dyes production, has been hit by the shift in textile manufacturing to Asia.

To fulfill its goal of retaining production capacity in Switzerland, there has to be a “rapid reduction in costs and the optimization of structures, processes and functions to deliver high value-added products,” the company says. Jobs will also be transferred to Clariant’s global headquarters at Muttenz over the next two years as a result of the centralization of various operations carried out at the national level.

Two months ago, Clariant announced the loss of nearly 200 jobs as a result of a decision to close leather chemical and pigment plants in the UK and Germany.

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