After an initial announcement, in 2019, of staff reductions in all the group's branches and factories, Honey announced Tuesday that it has planned a $500 million restructuring that also includes the elimination of 2.700 jobs, 12% of the current workforce (23 thousand people worldwide), in order to have the necessary funding for the relaunch by 2026.
Honey in 2023
After three years of growth, the group reported a 9% drop in revenue in 2023 and almost double units sold. And according to the official press release, the market does not show any improvement. “There are no signs of an imminent market recovery because what we are currently experiencing is not a temporary economic recession, but rather a lasting change,” the note reads.
The large household appliances market
The majaps sector in Europe is highly competitive, with a frantic competition between chains and distribution groups for promotions and rock-bottom prices, largely to the detriment of the producers. And only large groups with substantial financial resources can – according to many experts – cope with structural changes in demand. Or smaller companies with high added value products and great flexibility can do it.
“For the past 10 years, European manufacturers have sought to compete against the influx of home appliances across all categories from low-cost global suppliers based mainly in China and South Korea.” This statement is part of the responses that Beko provided to the CMA, the English antitrust body, which challenged the planned joint venture Whirlpool EMEA-Arcelik, considering it contrary to the interests of consumers and free competition.
The dumping of Asian companies
In reality - as has been underlined for some time in several contexts - these would be dominant positions on the part of Asian companies as they are favored not only by social and economic dumping, but also by constant and important state funding. This is almost always prohibited by the EC to European producers as it is considered an obstacle to industrial and commercial competition. Only once, in the face of permanent dumping in the large household appliances sector, Whirlpool and Bosch they managed to get Brussels to apply (minimum) duties on imports at very low prices from Asia. But the opposition of England and Northern European countries which do not have maiaps production sites subsequently prevented regular control and legitimate protection of the made in Europe for equal competitive conditions.
It appears to the writer that at the beginning of the 2000s the energy performance control bodies in the USA and Europe would have detected the presence, in almost all the majaps coming from an Asian country, of special electronic components capable of providing the control technicians with false data on the consumption of the appliances, so that they are in compliance with the European energy label standards. Since England and the countries of Northern Europe have long prevented, in the offices of community bodies, from carrying out controls on the imports of the sector - controls which would have avoided further distortions of competition - over the years the low cost products of labor and favored by state funding, have weakened - as is known - European industry, with the destruction of jobs, patents and quality.
Meanwhile, Asian producers they were able to establish themselves on the markets having had the gigantic advantage of financial resources drained by growing shares of the markets. Resources that they have largely poured into technological research that European industries were no longer able to hoard for innovations - thanks also to price pressures from retail. Add to this that European patents are never protected in those countries where they were indeed, in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, at the basis of their innovations.
