Austrian colour pigment specialist Heubach Group (Vienna; www.heubach.com) apparently intends to cut every fourth job at its Frankfurt-Höchst location. This is reported by the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, citing sources in trade union circles. According to these plans, 250 of the 1,000 jobs will be cut by the middle of next year.

“We are appalled,” Kai-Uwe Hemmerich, the head of the works council, told the newspaper, which alleged that Heubach plans to reduce its costs by EUR 20 mn with the move.

The company itself did not provide any information on the amount of savings or the number of redundancies. In response to a Plasteurope.com query, a spokesperson said the company aims to gear the location towards technologically highly specialised products going forward. This would be accompanied by “to our regret, an unavoidable reduction in staff”.

Heubach had just acquired the pigments business from Clariant (Muttenz, Switzerland; www.clariant.com) at the beginning of last year. The deal was financed in cooperation with investment firm SK Capital Partners (New York, New York, USA; www.skcapitalpartners.com).

Related: Huntsman announces sale of Textiles Effects to SK Capital Partners

It is unclear whether the savings plans that have now become public indicate that the transaction is not (or at least not yet) having the anticipated economic success. This could be indicated by the Heubach spokesperson’s phrasing that the company is “active in a very competitive global market” and, in particular, “competes with companies from countries with lower cost structures”.