Hundreds of jobs to go in Brussels periphery

Some 545 potential job losses were announced on Thursday, most of them in and around the periphery of Brussels. Douwe Egberts coffee factory in Grimbergen is looking at cutting some 275 jobs; the Belgian subsidiary of Dutch retail chain MS Mode announced 220 job losses; and 50 jobs are expected to go at the local division of American multinational Halliburton in Drogenbos.

The Douwe Egberts factory, which produces the company’s Senseo coffee pads, will close, depriving the area of its distinctive smell of roasted coffee. About 190 office staff will remain. The company claims the site is no longer tenable.

The redundancies at MS Mode will cut across all the company’s outlets in Belgium. The company has filed for bankruptcy, and details will follow once an administrator has been appointed and made an initial evaluation.

The branch of Halliburton in Drogenbos produces drill bits for oil wells. Unions claim they were given assurances a few months ago that the plant would not be affected during the company’s worldwide restructuring. “We never expected this,” a unions spokesperson said.

For federal employment minister Kris Peeters, the latest announcements come on top of announcements of job losses at insurers P&V and Axa, as well as the closure of the Caterpillar factory in Wallonia. He described it as “terrible news”. The government now needs to make a priority of job creation and employment support, he said.

Photo: Dirk Waem/BELGA