However, the reduction would occur naturally and would not entail redundancies, the company stressed.
Atria has pumped close to €36m ($40.8m) into its pork plant in Nurmo, based in the Southern Ostrobothnia region of Finland. The strategy here is to restructure its working methods to streamline production efficiency and ensure the pork cutting plant remains competitive in a challenging market.
The investment, first reported by GlobalMeatNews in 2015, will be used to work on the expansion and modernisation of its processing facility in Nurmo.
The company expects its €36m ($40.8m) investment to generate about €8m in annual savings with the financial benefits expected to come to fruition in early 2018.
Price pressure
Atria’s 80-person staff reduction will not come via job cuts; the workforce will be shrunk through natural attrition, internal transfers and pension arrangements, according to Atria. No redundancies have been reported so far.
The meat processor launched its investment project in Nurmo back in January 2015 and negotiations with its workforce also took place over this period. All negotiations with staff at the plant have since been completed and now plans are now in place to complete the workforce streamlining process by the end of 2016.
A comment from the company could not be obtained at the time of writing.
Atria’s Finland operation has been under pressure this year, with the price of meat products falling by 5% year-on-year, according to first-quarter trading results for 2016. This led to an increase in sales in volume terms, but pre-tax profits dropped marginally on the year before.