Reviewing Our Cost Base to Reflect Future Needs
Right-sizing CTAM
With the impact of the pandemic having a significant affect on the Chinese domestic market over the past three years, the economic situation is more challenging than we expected putting more pressure on the spending power of our consumers. This has meant to be able to compete for sales opportunities, reducing production costs and in turn selling price of our Chinese domestic ranges is the only way to promote more sales to form a virtuous sustainable cycle.
Whilst the Group is continuing to support the development of CTAM, it has therefore set detailed company goals to be achieved including specific measures to drive cost reduction. A project team has therefore been working to develop actions to protect the competitive edge in the Chinese market as only through continuous optimisation can we achieve a higher level of profitability and maintain a competitive advantage.
However, these actions take time and time is not something that is available to us particularly as production volumes have decreased. For this reason, we needed to take immediate action by reducing our headcount specifically in our non-production areas though there are some production roles that need to reduce in response to the low volumes.
This has been a major undertaking and one that we did not approach lightly. This is a difficult and uncertain time for everyone at CTAM, impacting people across every department. Therefore, please be respectful and mindful when speaking to your colleagues at this site.