As the newly appointed CEO Philipp Navratil aims to revitalize the world's largest food corporation, Nestlé plans to reduce its global workforce by 16,000 employees.
TL;DR
- Nestlé plans to cut 16,000 employees globally over the next two years.
- The workforce reduction aims to increase operational efficiency through automation.
- This restructuring is part of CEO Philipp Navratil's plan to revitalize the company.
- The layoffs will impact white-collar, manufacturing, and supply-chain positions worldwide.
In a bid to cut costs, Nestlé will slash 12,000 white-collar jobs along with an additional 4,000 manufacturing and supply-chain positions, reducing 6% of its global workforce over the next two years, the company announced Thursday. Some white-collar roles will be automated as the firm targets “operational efficiency,” the company said in the statement.
“We are transforming how we work,” Navratil wrote in a LinkedIn post that also shared his company’s earnings report and layoff announcement. “We are evolving and will simplify our organization and automate our processes.”
Nestlé experienced a decline in sales of 1.9% for the initial nine months of 2025, reaching approximately $82.8 billion when contrasted with the prior year's comparable timeframe. However, organic sales, which disregard currency fluctuations and acquisition impacts, saw a 3.3% increase during this same period, indicating a stronger business performance despite the adverse effects of currency exchange rates that negatively skewed the reported figures.
“This initiative is focused on transforming our ways of working, streamlining the organization and processes, and leveraging digitalization and automation,” a Nestlé spokesperson told Coins2Day.
The spokesperson stated that the workforce reduction will impact employees worldwide, though they also mentioned that “it will affect each market in a different way, and each market will prepare its own plan,”. “We are not in a position to share more details at this stage.”
Last month, the company behind brands like KitKat and Nesquik appointed Navratil as its new CEO. This move followed the dismissal of Laurent Frexie, a long-serving executive who had been chief executive for a year prior to an undisclosed romantic relationship involving a subordinate becoming public.
Navratil is now tasked with steering the company through a period of consumer demand headwinds in response to price increases and preferences shifting away from processed foods, which has prompted consumer packaged goods companies to shift its supply chains, Coins2Day previously reported.
“The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change faster,” Navratil said in the company disclosure. “This will include making hard but necessary decisions to reduce headcount over the next two years… Along with other measures, we are working to substantially reduce our costs.”