The downturn in the Limerick economy has taken another nosedive this week, with the announcement of 64 job losses at Avocent International Ltd, which has operations in Shannon and Dublin.

57 job cuts have been made at the company's Shannon Plant, which is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, said the measures had to be made as part of a series of actions designed to enhance competitiveness, improve efficiency and reduce the company's cost structure across its European locations.

The reductions affect certain research and development; marketing and technical support functions as well as the transfer of Asia operations from Shannon to the company's recently established regional hub in Singapore.

The company began talks with staff in the Mid-West and in Dublin about redundancy packages and said that the Shannon facility will remain the centre of support for Europe, Africa and the Middle East to include Finance, HR, IT, Customer Support, Professional Services, Quality, Operations and Distribution.

It is proposed that all redundancies will be effective throughout August to December 2008, while the impact of the consolidation will result in a reduction in employment levels at Avocent's Shannon operations from 160 to 103, including its Research and Development functions, which were grown indigenously at Shannon.

The functions of Avocent's Dublinoffice will also be transferred to the US, effecting seven redundancies, as part of these rationaliastion measures.

"It is with great regret that we have had to effect these changes as we had grown organically at Shannon and were extremely proud of our achievements in that regard but significant challenges have arisen that we have had to adapt to," said Avocent Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Avocent International at Shannon, Kieran MacSweeney.

"At this moment staff whose positions are affected are absolutely foremost in our thoughts. They have displayed exemplary levels of quality and flexibility throughout their employment and we will provide whatever support we can for them in their efforts to secure new positions," Mr McSweeney said.

Avocent delivers IT infrastructure management solutions that reduce operating costs, simplify management and increase the availability of critical IT environments 24/7 via integrated, centralized in-band and out-of-band hardware and software solutions. Additional information is available at www.avocent.com.

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment