NOL APL ship

Singaporean shipper Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) has cut several hundred staff from its global operations as part of an organisational restructure.

The company has completed laying off “a few hundred” employees, a move it first announced in May when it posted a US$254m first quarter loss. The staff losses came mostly from NOL’s container shipping arm APL.

While the layoffs are expected to save NOL about US$70m annually from 2013 on, the company said the restructuring was not motivated by a need to cut costs.

“The restructuring was done because the company had become bureaucratic and slow in decision making. It was to streamline our operations to make it more responsive to our customer needs,” an NOL spokesperson told the Business Times.

The staff cuts have reached to the top of the management chain, including executives such as Goh Teik Poh, APL’s president for South Asia, who will be succeeded by Jason Wong.