Automotive supplier Schaeffler has had another successful quarter. Nevertheless, many employees will also lose their jobs in Germany. The company justifies the renewed job cuts with a necessary corporate restructuring.
The automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler will cut a total of 1,300 more of its almost 83,000 jobs by 2026, 1,000 of them in Germany. The company justified the measure with a faster-than-expected transformation away from combustion engines to e-mobility. It is the second transformation program within a short period of time at the Franconian group. In 2020 he announced that 4,400 jobs would be cut.
Plant closures are not planned this time, it is said. According to the company, the three locations in Herzogenaurach, Bühl in Baden and Homburg in Saarland are particularly affected by the job cuts, which are to be implemented in a socially responsible manner by 2026. Three quarters of the jobs that would be lost would come from the areas of research and development of parts for combustion engines or from central functions. According to Schaeffler CEO Klaus Rosenfeld, the program will cost 130 million euros and should save 100 million euros a year from 2026.
The transformation to electric drives is going much faster than recently assumed – driven above all by developments in China and the USA, said Rosenfeld. Therefore, overcapacities in this area would have to be reduced in order to remain competitive. At the same time, the development of new technologies is progressing. Rosenfeld named a new central laboratory in Herzogenaurach, a hydrogen center and a center for e-mobility as examples.
The order intake for solutions for e-mobility significantly exceeded expectations, he said. Orders worth 4.7 billion euros are currently on the books. Planned were 2 billion to 3 billion. Overall, the third quarter went well, mainly thanks to good business in the industrial sector. Sales increased by 20.2 percent compared to the same period last year. For the year as a whole, Schaeffler is sticking to its forecast of sales growth of six to eight percent.
Last year, the company achieved an increase of 9.7 percent to 13.9 billion euros. After three quarters, Schaeffler is at 11.8 billion euros this year. At the same time, earnings before taxes, interest and special effects fell from 962 million to 813 million euros.
