Another day, another announcement that more jobs in Australia and New Zealand are being killed off by the Wuhan pandemic. To add insult to injury in this case, though, they’re not disappearing, they’re moving.
Right to the communist nation that unleashed the pandemic in the first place.
Vitamins colossus Blackmores will slash about 10 per cent of its workforce in Australia and New Zealand under a restructure, saying it will reinvest in high growth markets in Asia.
The company made the announcement while booking a 66 per cent slide in reported net profit for 2019-20 to $18.1 million.
Total revenue was down 3 per cent but up 30 per cent in international markets.
Chief executive Alastair Symington said that came despite unprecedented disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
I suspect that what this shows is that, with international travel to Australia and New Zealand all but shut down, Chinese tourists have perforce stopped buying up local stocks while on holiday. Instead, they’re ordering in.
Blackmores said Chinese shoppers represented almost one-quarter of all Australian vitamin and dietary supplement retail sales in the 2019 calendar year but fell to 16 per cent in the six months to June 30 this year as travel stopped due to COVID-19 restrictions[…]
Its online retail market share in China rose by 2 per cent in the second half of 2019-20, while sales rose in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
Well, if Ming can’t come to the multivitamin, the multivitamin company will go to Ming. And give him a job as part of the bargain.
“We are making good progress in China with stronger leadership in place and, for the first time, in-market dedicated resources who are close to our China consumers and using these insights for our new product innovation pipeline,” Mr Symington said.
The company plans to become a vertically integrated business, which means owning or controlling the supply chain, not just manufacturing the product[…]
Blackmores said[…]the job losses would be partly offset by investment in roles in Asia and “strategic priorities” across the group.
Dress it up how they will, this smells just like “offshoring” by another name.
At a time when governments, not to say consumers, across the Western world are clamouring to unshackle our economies from China, still some businesses are being lured by the siren call of the Yuan.
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