Italian motorcycle and sports apparel manufacturer, Dainese, is reducing its workforce due to reduced demand for its products.
Italian motorcycle and sports apparel manufacturer, Dainese, is reducing its workforce by 15% due to reduced demand for its products. It has also announced that its Molvena factory located near Vicenza, Italy will morph from an all-encompassing design and manufacturing facility to just a design house with a full shift in consumer gear production (with the exception of competition leather suits) to an existing plant in Tunisia.
Courtesy of Dainese:
Dainese S.p.A. has started reorganization of the Molvena plant, the historical premise of the company, which will now focus its operations increasingly on technological aspects linked to design and innovation.
Molvena is and remains the “heart” of Dainese which increasingly is the lynchpin around phases linked with research and development for products of future revolve through, for example, the creation of “pre-series” of innovative products.
However, this process requires transformations from a simple production plant to a design facility, as part of a strategy which has seen the group change over recent years from a simple manufacturing company to a company which has made research and innovation its guiding philosophy.
The company has dealt with the reduction in the workload of several departments at Molvena linked with sewing and tailoring and cutting of leathers (as a result of a fall in consumption and market demand) over the last three years without affecting employment levels: these losses have been reabsorbed by the company by cutting its profit margins and, since last May, also using the Redundancy Fund for employees.
This process, conducted in total agreement with the trade union organizations, is no longer sufficient for market conditions and the company unfortunately now finds itself forced to cut the workforce, which will affect around 80 employees.
The methods have been defined with the trade union organizations and the Vicenza Industrialists’ Association. All possible social mechanisms will be used. The program will start on January 16th, with use of the extraordinary redundancy fund for one year.
For the personnel remaining at Molvena, investment in training is planned, in order, as said, to change the face of operations at the plant.
The two production units opened by the company over the last two years in Tunisia, which are subsidiaries of the parent company, are responsible for performing the work previously assigned to third parties in other areas in Europe and Asia.
It is important to emphasize that production of competition leather suits will remain in Molvena and that all Research and Development activities will remain there as well.
In other words, the production lines at Molvena dedicated to products for which, due to the general crisis, there is no longer market demand, will be closed and not moved elsewhere.
The objective remains to confirm "Dainese" a role as leader in research in the sector of protective clothes for dynamic sports and of guaranteeing an appropriate level of competitiveness for a company which remains profitable, despite the demanding program of investments in technologies. In 2007, the acquisition of AGV completed the range of action and returned the production of a historical brand name in the world of motorcycling to Italy.
The group currently has a workforce of around 500 employees.
