HKScan, the Finland-based meals producer, has set out extra adjustments to its home production of poultry.
The corporate is once more embarking on strikes to check out to make its Finnish poultry arm extra productive and aggressive.
HKScan is to start out talks with group of workers representatives for round 600 staff at websites within the cities of Rauma and Eura. The plans “would possibly impact” 210 staff on the Rauma facility thru both task cuts or adjustments to contracts, the corporate stated.
It added “any task discounts or considerable adjustments within the phrases of employment contracts won’t impact the Eura unit in regards to the poultry trade”. Simply Meals has approached HKScan to elucidate how – if in any respect – group of workers on the Eura website online may well be impacted via the plans.
HKScan stated the brand new projects are a “continuation” of a “productiveness and profitability growth programme” began in 2020. That 12 months, as an example, the corporate invested in capability on the Rauma manufacturing unit https://www.just-food.com/information/hkscan-to-invest-in-finnish-poultry-plant-to-meet-increased-demand/.
Again in 2017, HKScan moved round 450 group of workers from Eura to Rauma, the place it had determined to construct a chicken-processing manufacturing unit.
Jari Leija, the EVP for HKScan’s Finnish trade unit, stated the deliberate adjustments would construct “a more potent base for the longer term profitability of our poultry trade”.
Leija added: “We’ve accomplished a large number of building paintings in our Rauma unit during the last few years. However, we’re obviously in the back of our goal with regards to price potency and profitability.
“So as to reinforce our marketplace and aggressive place, we want to proceed to concentrate on making improvements to the fee potency of our operations and in finding new techniques to satisfy buyer expectancies and shopper wishes additionally someday. We’ve deliberate to proceed our building paintings via reorganising our operating strategies and operations. Bettering price potency is especially vital now when price inflation has pushed up prices sharply.”
Within the first quarter of 2022, HKScan noticed its web gross sales upward push – together with in Finland – however its losses widen.
The corporate generated web gross sales of EUR437.2m (US$460.7m) within the opening 3 months of the 12 months, in comparison to EUR427.5m within the first quarter of 2021.
In Finland, HKScan’s greatest marketplace, the corporate made web gross sales of EUR182.6m, as opposed to EUR179.8m a 12 months previous.
The gang made an EBIT lack of EUR8.9m – in opposition to EUR1.1m a 12 months in the past – and a related EBIT lack of EUR8.5m, as opposed to considered one of EUR1.1m within the first quarter of 2021.
At house, HKScan’s Finnish trade booked a related EBIT lack of EUR1.2m, as opposed to considered one of EUR0.5m a 12 months previous.
“HKScan’s web gross sales elevated all over the primary quarter of 2022. The efficiency weakened as anticipated from the comparability duration,” CEO Tero Hemmilä stated.
“The explanations for this are transparent. The robust price inflation in all our marketplace spaces, already beginning in opposition to the tip of ultimate 12 months, speeded up via the conflict in Ukraine, driven manufacturing enter costs to report prime ranges. HKScan’s prices rose considerably and exceptionally rapid. The corporate was once no longer in a position to completely atone for the pointy upward push in prices via expanding gross sales costs and via manufacturing potency measures, although the rise in gross sales costs and the measures to strengthen manufacturing potency have been upper than within the comparability duration.”