Ontex has announced that manufacturing at its plant in Mayen, Germany will be phased out by mid-2022. Mayen will become an excellence centre for global process engineering, global  product technology and market adaptation baby care, and will bring innovations faster to the consumers. The Global Excellence Centre will be operational as of January 2022.

To return to profitable growth, Ontex is conducting a worldwide business review, including a focus on the most efficient use of production assets. Production in Mayen is being wound down due to the impacts of legacy contract losses and softer market trends on revenue. Despite the improvements achieved under other efficiency actions in recent years, these efforts were not enough to compensate the drop of volume and achieve competitiveness, Ontex said in a press release.

Ontex expects an impact of around 350 full-time equivalent jobs on a total of around 500. The company will work to redeploy employees where possible and will continue to engage with its social partners in Mayen to find the best solution feasible for all affected.

“Choices needed to be made, and as Mayen’s production capacity was not fully utilised, we have decided that Mayen’s role in the group will be to focus on global process engineering and global platform innovation for the Ontex group, and be one of the driving locations to bring innovation even faster to the market,” Markus van Gumpel, vice president, manufacturing Europe, Ontex said.