Unilever to slash 250 R&D jobs globally

LONDON: Consumer goods major Unilever Plc has announced slashing of 250 research jobs across the world as a part of its restructuring plan to consolidate its research and development activities.
    
The reshaping programme has been announced to combine and streamline group's three global research and development operations into one Unilever R&D organisation to improve efficiency, a company statement said.
    
"As a result of the intended changes, Unilever expects that approximately 390 full-time positions will be impacted, resulting in a net reduction of 250 full-time positions," it stated.
    
Besides, through the changes, Unilever would be able to deliver an integrated R&D programme, reduce overlap in activities between sites and increase the speed and impact of innovations.
    
The company, which has presence in over 100 countries, has selected six strategic sites as the global expertise base, from which it would deliver an integrated research programme.     

The locations include Bangalore in India, Shanghai (China), Port Sunlight & Colworth (UK), Trumbull (US) and Vlaardingen (The Netherlands).
    
"These changes to our organisational structure, together with an increased focus on our open innovation collaborations, will enable us to more efficiently deliver improved product performance to our consumers," Unilever Chief R&D Officer Genevive Berger said.
    
The statement said that Unilever has a strong track record in managing complex change programmes and it would do its utmost to minimise the need for compulsory redundancies.