STEWART PENNEY / LONDON
Manufacturer sheds 272 staff from Aerospace division; chief executive Svensson says future joint ventures are key
Further redundancies at Saab will depend on Swedish government decisions on which future programmes the country will participate in, says the company's new president and chief executive Åke Svensson.
Svensson says Saab is also more likely to develop additional joint ventures rather than participate in mergers with other European defence and aerospace players.
Last week, 272 personnel were shed from Saab's Linköping-based Aerospace division. The company placed 350 workers on notice in June, but reduced the number of employees to be made redundant.
He says despite the company's "all-time high orderbook" worth Skr47 billion ($5.8 billion), Saab has a lack of long-term development work. He adds that the redundancies have been managed so Saab does not lose technical capabilities: "We're maintaining a broad base," he says.
Saab Aerospace is being split into three new business areas - Saab Aerosystems, Saab Aerostructures and Saab Support Linköping. Svensson says "For Aerosystems, I can't see any more [redundancies] in the near term. It strongly depends on where Sweden wants to go in the long term and whether it will take part in development programmes. It is development engineers that have gone."
More lay-offs are likely, with 800 people across the group having received notice. Before the redundancies, Saab employed around 14,000 staff, with 4,500 in Aerospace.
Svensson says the prospect of Saab and Sweden joining France and its Dassault-led unmanned combat air vehicle programme is "still being discussed". Earlier this year, France allocated €300 million ($330 million) to develop a full-scale UCAV demonstrator to fly in 2008 (Flight International, 24-30 June).
With Saab's orderbook growing at around 5% a year, Svensson says he does not "foresee a merger or change of ownership, but partnerships, depending on the opportunities, will continue [to be created]".
Saab had been expected to merge its Dynamics missile business into the pan-European MBDA, but Svensson says the unit has been restructured and will continue to participate in consortia in a similar way to its Meteor and IRIS-T air-to-air missile programmes participation. Saab Dynamics "needs to be part of a wider consortium but this will be business-driven not ownership-driven", he adds.
Source: Flight International
