The Mikron Group is reacting to declining demand for machines from the automotive industry and making ‘selective adjustments’ to the head-count in the Mikron Machining division at its Agno site in Switzerland.

This does not affect development projects and the division’s service business.

The two other divisions — Mikron Tool and Mikron Automation — are also not affected.

The group says it is expecting sales for the 2019 financial year to be higher than in 2018, with EBIT at the same level as in 2018.

The Mikron Group (www.mikron.com) says it is reacting to declining demand for machines and is reducing capacity in the Mikron Machining division accordingly.

A 15% reduction in working hours was introduced there on 1 November; and as management does not anticipate any early recovery in demand from the automotive sector, it is cutting about 25 jobs from the current 370.

Over the past five years, the good order intake enabled Mikron to steadily increase the head-count at the Mikron Machining and Mikron Tool divisions in Agno to the current level of just over 500 employees.

The market launch and ‘industrialisation’ of the new MultiX machine platform (it won the ‘first innovation prize’ in the machine tools category at EMO 2019), plus the expansion of the service business, will continue as planned without any reductions.

At the same time, the machine portfolio will be “gradually optimised, additional investments will be made in infrastructure and operating resources for proprietary manufacturing, and the organisation will be subsequently geared to using fewer types of machines”.

Mikron Tool is continuing to expand at the Agno site, and the Automation division has reported “an encouraging business trend” for the first half of 2019.