Job losses in Switzerland as Rieter cements position in Asia
16/03/2016
The sudden appreciation of the Swiss franc in January 2015 led the company to streamline production in Winterthur, Switzerland, and reduce the volume of purchases denominated in Swiss francs.
The workforce there will be reduced by around 150, in part realised with early retirements and through workforce fluctuation, while for the unavoidable layoffs Rieter has a social plan.
The company said: “Following the shift of the spinning industry to Asia, Rieter had established state-of-the-art production facilities in China and India in recent years. Rieter is now in a position to supply products of the highest level of quality from all sites of its global manufacturing network.”
In April 2015, Rieter opened China’s first technology centre for short-staple fibre spinning in Changzhou. The spinning centre provide services including spinning trials, customer training and technology trials for customers in China and in the surrounding markets.
Rieter recorded annual sales of $1 billion in 2015, a 10% decline over 2014.
It employed a workforce of 5,077 on December 31, 2015, compared with 5,004 a year earlier. There were also 650 temporary employees, making up 11.3% of the workforce. The rise in the number of permanent employees occurred mainly in the Czech Republic and China.
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