FrieslandCampina Makes Plant Cuts

Dairy company Royal FrieslandCampina is reorganising six production sites, leading to the closure of six plants in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.

The closure will also see staff figures reduced by 624 out of its 20,500 permanent workers.

The closures, which will take place over the coming years, follows the merger of Friesland Foods and Campina at the end of 2008. Both companies have since investigated opportunities for maximising production, packaging and cheese distribution operations.

The plan is to close the production site at Elsterwerda, Germany, in mid-2011. Production of yoghurt and desserts in Germany will be relocated to the sites at Gütersloh, Heilbronn and Cologne.

The production site at Kalkar, Germany, will also be closed in mid-2011 at which time production of long-life (UHT) milk for the German market will move to Cologne.

Its long-life milk operations will be moved to Aalter, Belgium, and production for the Hungarian market will be moved to Debrecen, Hungary.

In Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, the plan is to close one unit, the Packaging-South department that packages coffee creamer, in the second quarter of 2011.

A cheese packaging site of FrieslandCampina Cheese in Drachten and Tilburg, the Netherlands, will also cease operations by the start of 2011, and in Dronrijp in the second quarter of next year. Butter oil and cream product production will stop in Klerken, Belgium, in mid-2011.