Ridley Corporation Ltd. announced a restructuring plan that will involve trimming jobs and closure of several of its feed mills.
The Melbourne, Victoria, Australia-based company, which manufactures aquaculture feeds, last week said that it will be instituting changes within the company resulting in a significant number of job cuts.
Ridley CEO and Managing Director Quinton Hilderbrand, who was appointed to take the helm of the company in August 2019, said in a company press release the changes are necessary “to deliver a compelling customer value proposition.
“The plan will remove a number of layers in certain parts of organization, will provide clear lines of accountability and will facilitate a more proactive relationship with our customers,” Hilderbrand said.
The restructuring is expected to provide the company savings of AUD 5 million (USD 3.4 million, EUR 3.1 million) with a “leaner, simplified and flatter reporting structure.”
The aim for a leaner reporting structure comes with a cost of about AUD 3 million (USD 2 million, EUR 1.8 million).
Ridley is also focusing attention to the construction of a new feed mill in Wellsford, Bendigo, in Central Victoria, rationalizing shutting down some of the mills, including the closure of one of its South Australian stockfeed mills – the Murray Bridge mill – last month.
Company Chairman Gary Weiss said the restructure was "an important step towards meeting the board's objectives.”
Ridley will boost its domestic market and "leverage its state of the art facilities and ramp up commercialization of its Novacaq franchise internationally,” the company said.
Novacq is a high-performance prawn feed, originally developed by CSIRO, which help producers grow bigger prawns.
For FY 2019, Ridley’s earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) reached AUD 40.5 million (USD 27.5 million, EUR 24.9 million).
Ridley forecast that its aquafeeds performance – serving the domestic salmon, barramundi, and yellowtail kingfish sectors – will continue to have a positive outlook for 2020.
In its financial report, Ridley has committed to playing an important role in supplying locally produced feed to the salmon industry and officially opened its new feed mill at Westbury in northern Tasmania in July 2019. In addition to salmon, production for other finfish is currently being transitioned to Westbury from the Narangba plant in Brisbane, which will now concentrate on prawn feed and extruded pet food.
