Bunge to cut jobs as strategic shakeup continues

Agriculture giant Bunge is to slash its workforce as part of its relocation of its corporate headquarters, part of a sector-wide trend for job losses and strategic shakeups as companies in the sector around the world continue to struggle with thin margins.

Around a third of staff currently located at its White Plains, New York headquarters have been offered relocation packages, according to reports first published by Bloomberg on Thursday.

Earlier this month, the company announced it would relocate its global headquarters from the US east coast to its agricultural heartland in St Louis, Missouri by the middle of next year as part of a wider strategic restructure.

Cuts are also to be made at Bunge’s Geneva office, where much of its grain trading operations are located.

Bunge employs 31,000 staff around the world, according to its most recent annual report.

As the “B” in the so-called ABCD group of companies that dominate global food supply, Bunge was subject to takeover bids from its rivals over the past two years as the publicly-listed company struggled in a tough trading environment.

However, recent cost-cutting measures have fed into improved results, which showed the company increased its profitability despite the effects of flooding across the US and a lingering trade war between Washington and Beijing.

Rival Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) announced in April it would cut an unspecified number of jobs from its North American operations as it sought to offset the impact of flooding on its US grain operations.

The cost-cutting was greeted with approval by major shareholder Continental Grain, which bought a further 125,000 shares in the company from the open market according to SEC filings – taking its share in the company to around 2.8%.