Nestle to Cut 400 More Jobs in France in Savings Push

(Bloomberg) -- Nestle SA plans to cut as many as 400 jobs in France as the Swiss maker of Perrier water and Herta lunch meats cuts costs.

The Swiss food company announced the plan in a meeting with labor leaders, according to Daniel Loget, secretary of the worker’s consultation committee at Nestle Purina in Paris, and Patrick Fernand, a representative from the CGT union. The company has 13,000 employees in France. Nestle will offer the employees retraining to switch to other positions and accept voluntary departures, a spokeswoman for the company said.

The announcement adds to the trickle of job cuts coming during President Emmanuel Macron’s administration. Earlier this week, retailer Carrefour SA said it plans to eliminate 2,400 positions.

The company already announced plans to eliminate most of the 550 jobs at its Galderma skin-health unit near the city of Nice.

In November, the maker of Cailler chocolate and Gerber baby food announced plans to consolidate seven sites around Paris under one roof by 2020, uniting businesses ranging from Nespresso to Purina. Nestle France Chief Executive Officer Richard Girardot has promised that every Paris employee would be offered continued employment at the new office in Porte de Versailles on the west side of the city.

The new multiyear efficiency program would create centers for support services such as purchasing and logistics throughout Europe and the world, in locations including Lisbon; Wroclaw, Poland; and Lviv, Ukraine, according to union representatives. About 2,000 people work in such services at Nestle’s French businesses, Loget said. The country is Nestle’s largest market in Europe by sales. 

The efficiency push is part of a program that Nestle unveiled in 2014 to simplify its business-support structure. The company, Europe’s biggest by market value, had 328,000 employees worldwide in 2016.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Mulier in Geneva at tmulier@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III, John Lauerman

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