Investments stopped

Automotive supplier cuts costs: 250 jobs lost

Hammerer Aluminum Industries, HAI for short, shrank from 2100 employees to 1850.

(Bild: HAI)

The stuttering economic engine and the associated uncertainties in a wide range of industries are increasingly leaving their mark. Aluminum processor Hammerer Aluminum Industries, HAI for short, also had to react to the drop in demand. The result: an investment freeze and the loss of 250 jobs.

Air conditioning panels and crash elements for the railroad industry, special profiles for mechanical engineering, front and rear axle carriers, floor profiles and battery housings for vehicles - Hammerer Aluminium Industries, or HAI for short, processes aluminum for a wide variety of industries.

In recent years, the company, which is based in Ranshofen (Upper Austria), has been inextricably linked with expansion and major investments. Now it has had to cut back: Investments that had been planned for this year have been put on hold. "Some projects have been postponed in consultation with the specialist departments, and external services for projects and maintenance have been reduced," says Managing Director Rob van Gils.

In particular, the low number of electric car registrations as a result of the overnight withdrawal of subsidies in Germany has led to a massive drop in turnover in our largest sales market. Demand from key customer sectors - especially the construction industry - also remains at a low level.

Rob van Gils, Geschäftsführer Hammerer Aluminium Industries

Personnel costs have also been cut. 250 jobs have already been cut across the entire Group this year, 100 of them at the Innviertel site. The number of employees thus fell from a total of 2,100 to 1,850. Half of the reductions were achieved by not filling vacant positions, the other half through redundancies.

"Short-time working is out of the question"
"In recent years, we have been able to secure numerous orders that should lead to full capacity utilization in production. In addition, many investments were made to ensure HAI's long-term success. However, due to the economic situation in Europe, orders are currently not being called up at all or only partially by our customers and we have to meet the lower demand," says van Gils. It was not possible to apply for short-time working: "According to the current Austrian regulations, short-time working is out of the question for us."