David Martin, vice president and general manager of Avery Dennison Materials Group in Australia, New Zealand and ASEAN had to make a difficult announcement on 20 March.
Avery Dennison Materials Group is decommissioning an ageing adhesive coating machine at its Adelaide plant. Some of Adelaide’s manufacturing will be moved to operations in Thailand and Malaysia. As a result, 23 positions from the Adelaide plant are being made redundant.
David Martin made the following statement:
“We are taking these steps now to address the challenging market conditions that have affected both us and many of the businesses in Australia that we serve and to ensure our future.
“Decommissioning the outdated coating machine will enable us to offer our customers access to wider assets; greater quality and consistency for high-volume tasks; a broader specialty capability and portfolio of solutions; and a faster and more reliable supply chain. It also will improve the efficiency and sustainability of our operations and help us become more competitive. Adelaide will remain the largest site for manufacturing self-adhesives in Australia.”
Avery Dennison will do everything possible for affected employees:
“We are committed to supporting our employees during this time. Our objective is to minimise compulsory redundancies and accommodate as many voluntary redundancies as possible. We will also be working closely with the union and government agencies to help employees transition as smoothly as possible to alternative work.”
See PKN's interview with David Martin published in the March-April 2014 issue, page 12-13. The article went to press prior to this announcement.
