Sales, marketing and finance jobs on the chopping block at Kraft Heinz, as the food giant moves to re-engineer its entire operation post-merger
Kraft-Heinz will cull 2500 employees from its workforce, as it seeks to remove duplications and gain the cost benefits of its merger earlier this year.
The food firm has announced the 2500 employees across Canada and the US would be notified in person that they would be losing their jobs.
Sales, marketing and finance departments will likely suffer the hardest hits from the job cuts, as the firm seeks to realise efficiencies in these areas.
While Kraft-Heinz has not detailed where the other cuts would fall, it did reveal all of the jobs were salaried positions, and did not involve factory workers.
“This new structure eliminates duplication to enable faster decision-making, increased accountability and accelerated growth,” a spokesperson said.
The National Post reports that employees who are due to be ousted from the company would be given severance benefits of at least six months.
According to reports in Global News, the company operates 36 food processing plants in North America as of the end of last year, and two of these are located in Canada. There are also three distribution centers located in Canada.
Of the 22,100 employees the combined company has in North America, about 2,000 work in Canada, and its head office is located in northeast Toronto.
The company has indicated it hopes to slash costs by a total of $1.5 billion by 2017 as a result of the merger, primarily in production and distribution.
The National Post reports Kraft Heinz had already been a cost-cutting drive in its North American offices, particularly its head office in Northfield, Illinois.
Recently, the firm moved to stop providing free Kraft snacks like Jell-O to employees, and tightened spending on stationary and donations.
