Kodak is planning to reorganise its sales territories in a move that could see the UK become part of a ‘Southern Europe’ cluster along with France, Spain and Italy.
Kodak: more restructuring
The proposals have been announced internally, and appear likely to result in layers of management being removed.
In a statement, a Kodak spokeswoman told PrintWeek: “Kodak is reorganising its global Print Systems division operations to achieve a more efficient, customer-centric focus by reducing levels of management and combining several territories into regional clusters.”
It comes a year after Kodak restructured into five ‘market-focused’ divisions.
At the same time it consolidated its sales organisation from four regions to two giant sales operations: EUCAN covering Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; and ALMA covering Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
This resulted in four cluster manager posts in Europe, with Martin Mayo having his UK and Nordics remit extended to include Australasia.
PrintWeek understands that the proposed changes to the business in the EMEA region would result in a Southern Europe cluster that encompasses the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans; and that this cluster could be run from Italy.
Germany and Scandinavia would be in the Northern Europe cluster.
Sources told PrintWeek that the proposals had been greeted with a perplexed response from UK employees.
Kodak declined to give further details about the plans, and Mayo was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.
The restructure is being driven by the print division’s managing director of worldwide sales, John O’Grady. He said the reorganisation would enable Kodak to continue to simplify its operating structure and “create a faster-moving, more competitive and more entrepreneurial organisation.”
It’s unknown how many jobs could be at risk as a result of the revamp, but it will lead to a number of personnel and reporting changes. Kodak said the details would be worked out in the coming weeks.
The imaging group is approaching the end of its financial year. In its Q3 results to the end of September sales were down 21% to $446m (£300m), although Kodak pointed to adverse currency fluctuations as the main reason for the fall. It made a $21m net loss in the period.