Move comes after company closed feed mill in September
Ridley Corp. Ltd. will implement a new organizational structure which will include additional staffing cuts beginning this month.
According to a press release from the company, “the Ridley board has approved an internal restructure plan which will see a significant reduction in staffing levels throughout the organization to be implemented in November 2019. A leaner, simplified and flatter reporting structure has been proposed which is designed to improve customer alignment while removing an estimated $5 million of annualized costs from the organization. The estimated total cost of the restructure to be brought to account in FY20 is AUD3 million.”
Ridley said construction of a new feed mill in Wellsford, Bendigo, Central Victoria, remains on target for completion in the last quarter of this fiscal year.
“Upon commissioning of this new feed mill, there will be a rationalization of Ridley’s existing mill capacity for the region which will incur AUD$6 million of one-off costs,” the majority of which “relate to asset impairments and write downs and are therefore non-cash in nature.”
Closure of Murray Bridge mill
In September, the company said it would close a feed mill in Murray Bridge, Australia, a century after the facility first opened. Ridley said that mill had been losing about AU$1.5 million (US$930,000) annually.
The feed mill had been facing a decline in business after a major customer, poultry company Inghams, built its own feed mill in the area. The new Inghams feed mill was part of a AU$279 million expansion, which also included the expansion of hatchery and breeder farm operations, as well as the addition or expansion of nine grow-out farms.
With the loss of feed production for Inghams, Ridley moved operations at the Murray Bridge feed mill to just one shift, which resulted in 13 job losses there.
