Beer brewer Heineken saw its sales drop sharply as a result of the corona crisis. Although the third quarter showed improvement, the outlook remains uncertain, which is why the company is making redundancies.
20% of jobs at risk
In the first nine months of this year Heineken saw beer volumes decrease by 8.3%. As a result, profit shrank to 396 million euro (compared to 1.7 billion last year). The closure of pubs and restaurants around the world is hurting the company. In the last third quarter, the brewer did see some improvement: the volume decline was ‘only’ 2.1% and as a result Heineken outperformed the market.
But top executive Dolf van den Brink does not see many reasons for optimism: “The situation remains highly volatile and uncertain. We expect rolling outbreaks of COVID-19 to continue to meaningfully impact many of our markets in addition to rising recessionary pressure.” To emerge stronger from the crisis, Heineken is therefore reviewing the effectiveness and efficiency of the entire organisation: the company wants to streamline its head office and regional offices and plans to cut 20% of jobs. The Netherlands, in particular, is in danger of being hit, as that is where Heineken employs the most people. In any case, the restructuring will only take place from the beginning of 2021: after all, the brewer had previously promised not to carry out any major restructuring this year.
