Nestlé To Slash Up To 450 Jobs At Galderma R&D Centre
Of the 550 jobs at Galderma R&D center in Sophia Antipolis Nestle had acquired from its joint venture partner L‘Oreal in 2014, the firm has announced that it will be cutting up to 450 jobs.
The planned cuts will leave Galderma with about 100 employees at the site. The skin health R&D center employs about 6,000 people worldwide, with five research-and-development centers located in France, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.S. and Japan.
Vevey-based Nestle is under pressure to improve efficiency and shareholder returns after years of slowing growth and its new Chief Executive Mark Schneider is expected to unveil his strategic priorities at an investor event next week.
Skin treatments have been a major part of a push by the world’s largest food maker into higher-growth and more profitable health products to counter a slowdown in its traditional food businesses, which range from KitKat chocolate bars to Perrier water.
Nestle is currently looking at diving deeper into prescription medications as treatments for some dermatological conditions are “moving away from creams towards injections or products taken orally.” To spur that along, the company is looking to combine prescription drug development into one single
research center. When that site is selected, Nestle said some of those people who are losing their jobs in southern France can apply for positions at the new facility. The push into dermatological lines was a way for the company to “counter a slowdown” in its food business.The move follows Nestle’s announcement last month that it would close a skin cream factory in Switzerland, with the potential loss of 190 jobs, and shift production elsewhere in response to the slowdown.
