Lanxess cuts production over holiday period

ERJ staff report (PRW)

Leverkusen, Germany -- Lanxess AG is to make temporary production cuts and shutdowns in Germany over the Christmas and New Year period in response to falling customer demand.

The German-headquartered group made the announcement on Wednesday after reaching agreement with employee representatives. Lanxess said it had held “intensive negotiations on uniform arrangements for temporary production cutbacks and plant shutdowns”.

The plan affects 23 of the 45 production facilities in Germany and 1400 employees will be directly affected. The facilities are located at the company's Leverkusen, Dormagen, Krefeld-Uerdingen and Brunsbuettel sites.

A Lanxess spokesman declined to say which specific plants on those sites would be affected, but said that the peak period for shut-downs would be the last week of 2008 and the first of 2009. The Leverkusen complex makes a large number of products, including technical rubber materials and rubber chemicals. The other three sites make butadiene rubber, additives and pigments among other products.

“This agreement is a first important step in a flexible, costs compatible and targeted response to the current decline in demand and the drop in orders,” said Rainier van Roessel, labour relations director and a member of the Lanxess Board of Management.

Werner Czaplik, chairman of the Lanxess Central Works Council, said: “The new agreements ensure that uniform arrangements apply at all sites and business units of Lanxess if facilities are temporarily shut down.”

Where plants are being shut down, Lanxess said workers would reduce positive balances on their time accounts or use part of their annual vacation. Where these options are already exhausted, workers will need to debit hours from their individual time accounts and then work extra hours at a later time, the company said in its statement.

From PRW (A Crain publication)

Press release from Lanxess