Nestle Cuts 46 Jobs In East Africa As Competition Stiffen

Written by Staff

Jan 19, 2015

Nestlé Kenya has sent home 46 senior and junior staff members as competition and huge operating costs continue to weigh down on companies.

It also highlights the struggles the consumer goods company is going through to retain its market share in a fluid market.

Last year, the parent company, Swiss-based Nestlé reported a 9.6 per cent fall in net profit to £3 billion (Sh413 billion) although the African market showed improved growth by registering a 9.7 per cent profit, up from 8.2 per cent in 2013.

Nestlé Kenya appears to be trimming its workforce in line with last year’s promise by chief executive Paul Bulcke that it would improve margins through cost cutting and investment in innovation.

The job losses add to the 400 workers laid off by Eveready Kenya and Cadbury East Africa last year.

Eveready cited high operational costs in its Nakuru plant and opted to import batteries from its Energizer Egypt subsidiary while Cadbury decided to keep only its marketing and distribution outlets and rely on imports.

The affected employees are drawn from Nestlé Kenya and Nestlé Equatorial Africa market with the latter made up of 21 countries, including Kenya, with Nairobi as the regional hub.

In a confidential letter dated January 15 and signed by Alastair Macdonald who is the head of human resource at Nestlé Equatorial, Mr Macdonald says the current workforce structure has not responded to set market targets in terms of profit scale, forcing the firm to restructure its employees.

“The current business model within our region is not responsive to our current or anticipated business expectations. As such, we are actively reviewing our structure to ensure that we can provide sustainable and profitable growth across the region,” said Mr Macdonald in a letter sent to the sacked employees.

“This has led management to rethink how we operate with a view of accelerating growth. We anticipate that several employees and related functions may be impacted by this intended redundancy,” added the statement.