Home » Business » Auto supplier ZF wants to sell the Diepholz plant

Auto supplier ZF wants to sell the Diepholz plant

The automotive supplier ZF is pressing ahead with the 15,000 job cuts announced last summer. Now around 500 employees in Diepholz, Lower Saxony, fear for their jobs because the “Electronic Interfaces” area and plant are to be sold. In a letter to the workforce, the top management threatens that the number of jobs will decrease significantly.

ZF-Werk in Diepholz

Founded in 1915 as a “gear factory” in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, ZF is now the world’s fifth largest automotive supplier and an international leader in the field of driveline and chassis technology.

At the end of May 2020, the group announced that it would cut up to 15,000 jobs worldwide in the coming years. The savings are intended to refinance more than 12 billion euros in investments in e-mobility and autonomous driving. In addition, they should secure the loans with which ZF has been buying up companies and companies that fit into the targeted changed business area, such as the truck supplier Wabco for 7 billion euros.

The corona pandemic serves as a pretext to justify the attacks on jobs and wages. Consolidated sales in 2020 of 32.6 billion euros were only 11 percent below the previous year’s figure of 36.5 billion euros. The net loss amounted to 741 million euros.

Nevertheless, ZF boss Scheider was not dissatisfied. “2020 was an ambivalent year. But we have mastered the crisis together, advanced the company’s transformation and secured substantial new orders in the strategically important fields of future technologies, ”he said about three weeks ago when the balance sheet was presented. By the end of 2020, ZF had won orders for electric drive components worth 14 billion euros for the next few years. This positive trend continued in the first few months of this year with further new orders.

The losses are mainly due to the provisions for the reduction of 15,000 jobs. In Germany in particular, jobs are usually destroyed through severance payments and social plan regulations.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.