The Danone group has announced plans to restructure its European biscuit operations.
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The company said it would be closing down six production sites in five countries, while downsizing five plants, and expanding five others. The company plans to cut 1,780 jobs as part of a Europe-wide restructuring of its biscuit division by June 2000. The French food group said a further twenty sites will be unaffected by its plans.
Of the six plants earmarked for closure, two are in France – at Calais and at Evry in the north of the country. The remaining four plants are in Belgium, Italy, Hungary and the U.K.
Danone said in a statement that 570 jobs would go at its French operations, while in the UK 180 jobs would be lost at the Aintree and Wigston sites. It said a further 100 positions would go at Tallaght in Ireland.
A report in Le Monde this morning, the newspaper which was first to report on the planned closures in January after a memo was leaked, claimed that sites in France, Hungary and Italy will be affected. The paper said the group will be closing just two plants in France, namely one of the sites at Ris-Orangis (in the Essonne ‘département’ or administrative region) and Calais (Pas de Calais). Sites at Besançon and Château-Thierry will remain operational. Those in Bordeaux and Nantes may benefit from some of the sweet and savoury biscuit capacity being transferred from the sites that will close.
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By GlobalDataThe paper suggests that the furore provoked by news of the group’s plans when they were leaked in January has prompted Danone to downscale the proposed closures. Danone CEO Franck Riboud claims to be committed to the “dual social and economic” project inspired by his Father, Antoine Riboud, who founded the group.
To read more on Danone’s plans, click here
