The Executive Board of Desso Holding BV and Desso Sports
Systems NV hereby announces its intention to restructure the Sport
Division. This will involve Desso continuing the development,
marketing, sales and installation of artificial grass and DESSO
GrassMaster pitches and with the extrusion of yarns. However, Desso
plans to stop its tufting and coating operations for artificial
grass pitches.
This intention is a result of the increasingly fierce
price competition in the global artificial grass market. This is a
market characterised by constantly rising prices of raw material
and a general trend to produce artificial grass pitches on a larger
scale at lower costs.
With the volumes of artificial grass pitches produced by Desso, it
is no longer proving possible to continue profitable, independent
tufting and coating operations. An in-depth analysis has shown that
it would be better to have our yarns tufted into fully finished
pitches by other suppliers. Desso's added value is mainly in the
development of yarns, installation of artificial grass pitches and
hybrid grass systems, also known as DESSO GrassMaster pitches. For
Desso, the sales & marketing organisation is another very
important part, whose successful activities have also contributed
to Desso's growing market share in the sector's recent crisis
years.
However, despite this growth in market share, the absolute volumes
of artificial grass pitches are too low to maintain profitable
tufting and coating operations. Consequently, Desso intends to
adjust the organisation of the artificial grass production and
sales to these new market conditions. As a result, in production as
well as in other departments, 79 jobs will be lost among the manual
workers and 12 among the office staff. For this reason, we have
contacted the Works Council and trade unions today about entering
into a consultation phase, in line with the 'Renault
Act'1), to find appropriate solutions.
With regard to the selection of suppliers who can tuft and finish
these artificial grass pitches according to Desso's specifications,
a very careful analysis will be performed. Discussions are
currently being conducted with several parties.
1) Compliance with the legal information - and consultation obligations towards the employees (organizations) in the supervision of a proposed collective redundancies to a (partial) closure.