Laird, the materials and RF component manufacturer, has announced job cuts of around 4,500 and the closure of a manufacturing plant in Hungary as sales dip in the industry slowdown.
The component manufacturer has announced a 40% reduction in its global workforce in the final quarter of the year
The company is closing a manufacturing facility in Hungary and it expects three of its facilities in the US to be closed or "downsized significantly", with production from these sites transferred to Mexico and China.
“This will lead to further labour and overhead reductions during the first half of 2009,” said the company.
The cause of the cuts has been a dramatic fall in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008 of around 25% to 30% compared with the same period of 2007.
“We have seen an acceleration of the slowdown in demand for our products across virtually all of our market sectors in November. This has continued into December, with de-stocking in the global supply chain,” said Laird.
The company anticipates no market recovery during 2009.
“Our planning assumption is that global unit handset volumes will decline by 10% from 2008 levels. We expect that the cost reduction measures that we are implementing, lower commodity prices, greater penetration of our products, and the breadth of our business activities, will underpin our performance in 2009,” said Laird.