Automotive supplier Grammer (Amberg / Germany; www.grammer.com) has identified an additional 150 jobs to be eliminated in a second restructuring phase. This is on top of the 630 jobs now scheduled to be shed in the first phase – see Plasteurope.com of 30.10.2007. While the job cuts announced in October 2007 involved mainly international operations, the second round targets for the most part administrative jobs at the German headquarters of the manufacturer of seats for utility vehicles.

As CEO Rolf-Dieter Kempis told Plasteurope.com earlier, there will be no compulsory redundancies at the German parent company at present. The second job-cutting scheme is expected to add another EUR 10m in cost savings to the originally budgeted EUR 30m. Despite one-off charges for restructuring, the company is aiming for a slight improvement in its operating result for 2008.

Grammer will publish provisional figures for 2007 at the end of February. In late 2007, the company revised upward its growth forecast for the year to 7%. This would take sales to around EUR 942m.

Thus far, the seat manufacturer has declined to speculate publicly about possible plans by Austria’s Polytech Group to pursue a higher shareholding – see Plasteurope.com of 17.01.2008. In January, Polytec announced that it had acquired 9.6% and would decide on whether to launch a takeover bid following a meeting with the German company’s management and principal investors.