Production could move to Atria’s vast site in Nurmo (pictured).
Finnish food company Atria could move pork production away from its factory in Jyväskylä, in the centre of the country, as part of ongoing efforts to improve its productivity and cut costs.
The meat processor will identify ‘overlapping functions’ and areas where the business can be restructured, with a view to centralising pork production at another site in Nurmo, in western Finland.
Atria expects that integrating Jyväskylä’s pork production into the Nurmo site will help it achieve savings of around €1.2 million a year, beginning in June 2018.
The company has a vast meat processing operation in Nurmo: it had already agreed to invest €36 million in a new cutting plant for pork production at the factory, adding 4,500 additional square metres of production space to make it one of the world’s leading pig cutting plants, with the project to be completed this year.
It is not clear how many jobs would be lost as a result of the change at Jyväskylä, although Atria said that it would remove ‘some 25 man-years’ from the factory. Negotiations with staff will begin ‘immediately’, it said.
The site passed into Atria’s ownership when it acquired Saarioinen’s procurement, slaughtering and cutting operations for beef, pork and chicken in February 2014.
Atria makes a wide range of products including cold cuts, fresh meat and packaged food. Its factory in Forssa, in southern Finland, is also used for the manufacture of ready-to-eat salads. Atria Finland operates brands including Forssan, Bravuuri and Kulinaari – although its most recognisable label to Finnish consumers is the self-titled Atria brand, which serves up a range of products from fresh chicken breasts to curry mixes.
It had net sales of €932 million in 2016, with a share of 25% of the country’s slaughter industry.
It forms part of the wider €1.35 billion Atria Group, which also has business divisions for the Baltics, Russia and Scandinavia.
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