The restructuring was announced on Monday morning at a special works council and the Renault procedure for collective dismissals has been started. In Halle, 178 jobs are at risk, out of a total of 500. In the Wieze and Lokeren branches, this concerns 311 positions for 1,538 full-time equivalents, ACLVB and ACV report. White-collar and managerial positions are particularly affected. These functions will be centralized in the Swiss group’s new service center in Poland. Barry Callebaut is the largest chocolate manufacturer in the world.
The round of layoffs is part of a global restructuring, in which Barry Callebaut is eliminating 2,500 positions, out of a total of 13,000 worldwide, spread across 60 locations. It was known that a restructuring was coming. In September 2023, the new CEO, Peter Feld, announced his future strategy for the chocolate group: BC Next Level. 500 million Swiss francs will be invested in the modernization and further digitalization of production, but this will be offset by an efficiency exercise in personnel and processes and a cost saving of 15 percent.
The unions are amazed that so many jobs would disappear, say representatives Kurt Maryssen and Hilde Verhelst of ACLVB and ACV respectively.
Now that the intention for collective dismissals has been announced, the consultation rounds are starting. These will start this week at European level and will run in parallel in the affected branches in Europe from next week. There has not yet been a strike, but the union representatives do not rule out action if negotiations do not go according to plan. “We are very close to the staff,” it says.
Profit increase
Kurt Marysse particularly criticizes the scale of the restructuring operation and points out that the company experienced an increase in profit of 9.6 percent last financial year, good for 443 million Swiss francs. However, the purchasing power crisis was felt in reduced sales of chocolate (minus 1.1 percent in the 2022-2023 financial year) and the factory in Wieze had to be shut down in the summer of 2022 due to a salmonella contamination. High cocoa and sugar prices had a severe impact on cash flow, which fell to 251.8 million Swiss francs last financial year compared to 358.5 million a year earlier.
“That does not alter the fact that Barry Callebaut is a healthy and profitable company,” says Hilde Verhelst of ACV. “It had the ambition to be number one in the world through unbridled growth and to pay high profits to its shareholders. But now that things are slowing down, the savings are being passed on to the staff. That feels very unpleasant.”
The company responded with a statement, pointing to the planned investment of 500 million Swiss francs and measures to increase efficiency in the company. “Overall, the BC Next Level program aims to reduce costs by 15 percent, which could impact 2,500 positions globally over the next 18 months, primarily by eliminating duplication and inefficiencies. Discussions with the employee representatives have just started.”
Previously, CEO Peter Feld, who was hired as a restructuring manager in April 2023, had indicated in an interview with the German Handelsblatt that Barry Callebaut was “actually run as four companies: one chocolate company in the US, one in Europe, one in Asia and the global cocoa activities. We have never decided to standardize those processes in the past.” To illustrate the complexity of business operations, he gave the example of the planning department in Germany. “They now have to work with four different computer programs to coordinate our chocolate deliveries.”
Showpiece
The unions do not immediately fear for the survival of the Belgian branches. Wieze is not only the cradle of the Belgian Callebaut, which merged with the French Cacao Barry in 1996. The factory remains one of the most important producers of liquid chocolate in the group and a necessary showpiece to earn the precious Belgian Chocolate label. The distribution center in Lokeren only opened in 2021, fully automatic and the largest worldwide, from where chocolate is distributed to 140 countries.
In his response, Barry Callebaut confirms that the factories in Halle and Wieze “remain very important factories” and that the intention is to continue making Belgian chocolate there.
