Amsterdam (AFP) – Under-pressure Dutch brewer Heineken said Wednesday that it would scrap up to 6,000 jobs as it faces what it called “challenging market conditions” with beer volumes down compared to last year. The company said it would be “accelerating productivity at scale to unlock significant savings, reducing 5,000 to 6,000 roles over the next two years.”
“We remain prudent in our near-term expectations for beer market conditions,” chief executive Dolf van den Brink said in a statement. Traders appeared to welcome news of the job cuts, with shares up around three percent at the opening on the Amsterdam stock exchange. Van den Brink stunned the company last month by announcing that he would be stepping down after almost six years at the helm. He told reporters he was leaving with “mixed emotions” after acknowledging that he had guided the company “through turbulent economic and political times.”
“My priority for the coming months is to leave Heineken in the strongest possible position,” he said. Heineken employs around 87,000 people globally. In October, the brewer had already announced it was cutting or reassigning 400 jobs as part of a reorganisation of its Amsterdam head office to take advantage of new technologies.
– Shipments slip –
Executives declined to specify where the bulk of the job cuts would come, but chief financial officer Harold van den Broek hinted they would come in Europe. “Europe is a big part of our business,” he told reporters. “And you see from the financial results also that it is very tough to drive a good operating leverage there.”
“So we are focusing many of the initiatives to strengthen our European business, but not exclusively so,” he said. Beer volumes globally at the world’s second-biggest brewer after AB InBev were down 2.4 percent in 2025, the firm reported in its annual results. The decline was especially severe in Europe and the Americas, which dropped 4.1 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively.
In the fourth quarter of last year, total global beer volumes were down 2.8 percent. Total annual sales for Heineken came in at 34.4 billion euros ($41 billion), compared to the 36.0 billion it banked in 2024. Net profits were 2.7 billion euros, which the firm said was a 4.9 percent gain on last year when currency fluctuations were stripped out.
Looking ahead to 2026, Heineken forecast full-year organic operating profit growth of two to six percent, after a 4.4 percent rise last year to 4.4 billion euros.
© 2024 AFP
