Global cost-cutting programme expected to generate around €150 million worth of savings per year.
As part of its Global Excellence programme, Henkel has announced it will cut around 3,000 jobs worldwide – 1,000 of which will be in Germany.
Roughly half of the job losses will take place at the company's Dusseldorf headquarters. Henkel currently employs over 52,000 staff.
Henkel has cited high raw material prices and tough competition as reasons for cutbacks. The pending job cuts are expected to reduce annual costs by €150 million as of 2011.
The news has come as a surprise to some after the company generated a record profit of €1.4 billion in 2007 on a turnover of around €13 billion.
The company says the job cuts will be carried out in a socially responsible way, although the possibility of redundancies cannot be ruled out.
Henkel also plans to transfer its liquid deteergeent production from the current site in Genthin, East Germany, to Dusseldorf to try and reduce transport costs. It is unknown how this will affect the 240 staff employed at Genthin.
Trade union IG BCE has demanded that staffing cuts must take place without forced redundancies, and believes that the transfer of the detergent site is incompatible with the group's social responsibility.