Indesit Lay Off 1425 Workers

Re: Indesit Lay Off 1425 Workers

GBUK actually does still make stuff, it’s just hi-tech that it does as the profits and costs justify the skills required and meet the salary expectations that make it all viable.

We suck at making cheap stuff, can’t compete with the low cost bases from the East.

One thing that winds me up a bit is that people here seem to expect the top end quality and sweatshop prices and the two are diametrically opposed to one another. It just isn’t possible to have your cake and eat it.

IIRC Indesit said recently that they’d taken a knock on profits to shore up volumes. Basically, PR speak for, we chopped the prices so we could maintain our volume targets which, they like many others NEED in order to maintain the pricing.

Even the Germans are at that, Bosch are known for it as well as BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Audi…

Basically you have an artificially low price that is only possible by selling through massive volumes.

Hence the boom in UK car sales of late, the Germans and others (I am reliably informed) have been “dumping” product into the UK but chopping dealer margins in order to maintain volume.

There’s a whole heap of complications in all this but that’s the basics as I am led to believe from multiple sources.

So my guess would be that Indesit don’t see the volumes and cost base to be able to support Italian production for the foreseeable future and are cutting their losses and making for the hills of Former Soviet Block States, Turkey and the Far East.

In a lot of ways it’s actually quite funny in an ironic sort of way.

In the 70’s and 80’s the Italians swamped the EU with cheap products as they had modern factories that were light years ahead of those we made turn out Spitfires and whatnot a few years earlier. Plus, we had a few issues with strikes and the likes which led to poor quality although that was only one element of that.

Then the Berlin Wall fell and there was a migration to Poland etc. for the lower labour costs and incentives to set up camp there.

Then as China opened up a decade or two ago it became cheaper to make stuff there and ship it all the way back, especially as the former Soviet Block countries standard of living rose.

Now the cost of producing in China is ramping up as well, there’s been a number of reasonably high profile companies pulling out of China. It’s gotten too expensive. Quality was never that brilliant if even halfways decent. It’s a pain in the butt to talk to someone that far away from your timezone. The flights out there are a killer.

The only question remaining is, where next?

Will this signal the demise of Indesit, I seriously doubt it especially since they’re supposedly now trying to break into the good ‘ol US of A.

But I shouldn’t be surprised if you get products in the not too distant with a “Made In Mexico” or Made In Brazil” label on it.

If you were really, really cynical you may even be forgiven for thinking that this may just be a way of moving the jobs around the globe.

K.