Triumph plan for hundreds of job losses across world
• Firm announce plans for restructure due to coronavirus
Triumph Motorcycles have begun a consultation with their employees that will likely result in hundreds of redundancies. The move is an attempt to shore up the business in the wake of coronavirus, which they say has more than halved the demand for the sort of large capacity machines they sell. Triumph currently employ just over 1000 people in the UK, with a further 1000 or so around the world. As things stand, the company expect to make 400 redundancies in total, with 240 of those coming from within the UK, although it is not clear at this point where in the business these losses will come from. The vast majority of Triumph’s sales come from the UK, Central Europe and the US, where demand for 500c+ machines has plummeted by between 40-65% over the last few months. Despite claiming to have outperformed the market, Triumph say they have no option but to cut costs if they are to secure the longterm future of the business. “We’ve looked at what we need to enable us to succeed in what we believe will be a very different marketplace,” says Paul Stroud, Chief Commercial Officer at Triumph.
“Looking at the economic downturn in 2009-10, the large capacity market crashed… and never recovered.
“We do not believe the big bike market around the world will recover to the level it was pre-Covid-19.”
The move comes on the back of Triumph’s earlier announcement that they intend to make 50 people redundant in their production department as they move all of their motorcycle mass production to Thailand. At the time, Triumph said they intended to create 40 new roles in their R&D department as part of a strategy for “engineering excellence” and despite this set back, they have confirmed that is still the plan. Prior to this Triumph’s financial outlook was good, selling just over 60,000 motorcycles in the year to June 2019, generating a pre-tax profit of £9.45million, while also being on track for a “record year” in 2020.
• ‘We believe it will be a very different market’ PAUL STROUD, TRIUMPH