Scottish industrial engineering giant Weir Group is set to cut 350 jobs across its global workforce as it looks to make savings of £35 million a year.
The Glasgow-headquartered firm said it has decided to close five of its smaller manufacturing facilities in the wake of a group-wide review to identify cost reduction and efficiency opportunities.
Three of the five closure-earmarked factories are in North America, and the other two are in Australia and France.
However, a total of 10 Scottish-based jobs are at risk as a result of wider restructuring in the firm’s Power and Industrial unit.
Weir yesterday said it expected to make £20m of savings next year and £35m of recurring annualised costs reductions from 2016 as a result of the changes being made.
However, it will have to pay out an estimated £25m in one-off restructuring costs in the short-term, and it will also have to swallow exceptional impairment charges of approximately £20m as a result of the facility closures.
The structural changes were revealed as Weir reported in an interim Q3 update that its underlying full-year financial expectations were unchanged.
New order input in the period was up 14% year-on-year, while aftermarkets orders including income derived from its Minerals, Oil and Gas and Power and Industrial divisions was up 25% overall.
“While the global economic and end market outlook remains uncertain, our strong competitive positioning enables us to continue to invest through the cycle to deliver sustainable, profitable growth,” group chief executive Keith Cochrane said.
“Our large installed base continues to provide a solid platform for high-quality, recurring aftermarket revenues that drive growth.
“We’ve also continued to make good operational and strategic progress in the third quarter, taking actions to further improve efficiencies across the group and accelerating our Minerals strategy with the acquisition of Trio.
“Weir is well placed to deliver good organic growth in 2014, in line with our earlier guidance.”
Shares in Weir closed the day down 76p at 2,165p.