Heineken N.V. plans to lay off 8,000 employees, amounting to about 10% of its workforce, to cope with losses it has incurred during the pandemic.
Net revenue for fiscal 2020 dropped 17.7% and operating profit was down 78.6%, to US$944.4 million. The company attributed the drop to the pandemic. “The impact of the pandemic on our business was amplified by our on-trade and geographic exposure,” CEO Dolf van den Brink said in a statement. Total beer volume for 2020 was 5.85 billion gallons, an 8.1% drop from 2019.
Heineken announced last fall that it would undergo an “organizational redesign” to “review of the effectiveness and efficiency of its organizations at head-office, regional offices and each of our local operations.” As a result, the company plans to let about 8,000 employees go. Doing so will incur an estimated restructuring charge of about $509.9 million, while resulting in annual labor savings of about $424.9 million.
Heineken also announced other money-saving initiatives, including cutting SKUs and striving for greater overall efficiency.
