News

Rio Tinto Alcan has revealed plans to lay off 1,500 staff across Europe as it aims to cut costs, but its packaging operations look likely to be spared the worst of the cutbacks.

The mining giant's French division yesterday outlined the extent of the cutbacks and presented a redundancy plan to its European Works Council to cut staff in France by 680.

Of these, 450 are temporary posts where contracts will not be renewed, while only 40 permanent roles in the group's packaging operations will be cut. The majority of the permanent job cuts will be in Rio Tinto Alcan's engineered products division, where 130 redundancies will be made.

No details have yet been released on how the cutbacks will affect Alcan's UK packaging divisions. However, it proposed cutbacks at its Salterbeck site in Cumbria last October   and, in 2006, closed its Midsomer Norton plant in Somerset .

In yesterday's statement, Rio Tinto global head of human resources Hugo Bagué said that the measures proposed were "difficult [but] necessary to enable Rio Tinto to deal with the challenges presented by the global economic climate and to position the group well for when recovery comes".

The announcement from France came as the group's London head office gave details of 1,100 job cuts in its worldwide primary metals business.

The job cuts are part of a plan first outlined in December to cut its debt by €10bn. It also revealed at the time that discussions were at an "advanced stage" over the sale of its Alcan Packaging business.

A spokesman for the company told Packaging News: "The sale process is continuing".