Safran, the world’s third-largest aerospace supplier has announced it is to cut it’s workforce in Mexico by 3,000 as the French company tries to deal with he fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the aerospace industry as a whole.
Safran has two plants at Queretaro, Mexico, an industrial city which has become a hub for global manufacturing supply chains with a proliferation of export-focused factories. Safran has over 13,000 employees working in Mexico and confirmed that the paring back of numbers was a necessity in order to protect approximately 10,000 other jobs in the country.
In emailed comments sent to Reuters news agency, a Safran spokesperson stated that: “We face a sharp drop in customer orders. Unfortunately, this situation is affecting our business and we must take steps to adapt to clients’ requests. One of these steps is a reduction of the workload,” the spokesperson added. Safran began notifying employees of its intentions as of the third week of April. “This tough step is proposed in order to preserve the longer-term existence of Safran in Mexico and to protect more than 10,000 jobs still active in the country,” the spokeswoman said.
