TransAtlantic restructures to become more competitive and introduces a more customer and sales-oriented organization
TransAtlantic’s Industrial Shipping division is launching a major restructuring program to create a competitive organization that is aligned to the prevailing market conditions. The measures are designed to ensure that TransAtlantic is favorably positioned in the shipping and logistics segments in order to face forthcoming challenges and the market trend in the Baltic Sea and northern Europe.
“We are sharpening our cost-effectiveness and are implementing this restructuring program as a feature of a sustainable, long-term strategy,” says Heléne Mellquist, President of TransAtlantic’s Industrial Shipping business area. “We are moving from being a traditional shipping company to offering door-to-door logistics solutions and, as this change progresses, we must also adapt our organization and fleet.”
The restructuring program includes centralization of additional parts of the operation to Gothenburg. The office in Västerås will be closed and a large part of the office activities in the UK will be relocated to Gothenburg. The recently developed Customer Service department will be developed additionally, and process and business support systems will be optimized to make it possible to offer customers service and logistics that are even more efficient and competitive. The work to improve process efficiency will impact administrative functions at the head office and entail staff cutbacks.
“The key to our success is the ability to offset the weakened market conditions by implementing structural and operational cost-cutting measures, while simultaneously capturing market share,” adds Heléne Mellquist. “We are reducing the workforce to be able to cut our costs but must simultaneously increase the intensity of our customer focus and accelerate our sales in order to become profitable.”
All of the decisions will be taken after local MBL negotiations in accordance with the Swedish act on co-determination in the workplace have been completed. In total, it is estimated that approximately 30 individuals will be affected by the proposed lay-offs.
The immediate savings resulting from the centralization of operations are expected to amount to approximately SEK 21 M.
For further details, please contact Head of Corporate Communications at TransAtlantic, Carina Dietmann, ph +46 (0) 31-763 2334, carina.dietmann@rabt.se
Rederi AB TransAtlantic (RABT) is a leading Swedish shipping company with headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden and additional offices in Europe. The company is organized into two business areas: Viking Supply Ships and Industrial Shipping. Viking Supply Ships, operating within offshore and icebreaking, is also a wholly owned subsidiary of RABT. The Industrial Shipping business area consists of three divisions: Bulk, Container and RoRo. The Group has about 800 employees and the turnover in 2012 was MSEK 3,274. The company’s B-shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm, Small Cap segment. www.rabt.se
TransAtlantic is obliged to make this information public according to the Financial Markets Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act (Sw: lagen om värdepappersmarknaden and lagen om handel med finansiella instrument). The information was submitted for publication on May 30, 2013 at 01.00 pm.