Camposol announces restructuring and layoffs

Peru’s Camposol has announced a corporate restructuring and layoffs as it struggles to deal with spiralling costs and the economic crisis. On 14 September CEO José Antonio Gómez released a statement informing workers of plans to downsize some areas of the company and lay off staff immediately as part of a focus on achieving greater efficiency in costs and expenses.

“2022 was a difficult year, full of challenges and with very high costs in fertilisers, maritime freight, and logistic in general,” the statement said. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine complicated our main markets in an important way, as it reduced the price of avocado, blueberry and other products and caused other complications that generated negative impacts on the economies of the countries where we produce.

“This year, like last year, is very challenging, with adverse impacts due to the El Niño phenomenon, which has been reducing production volumes of avocado, blueberries, citrus and other products, and in turn increasing their costs significantly.”

The company’s accounts show it made a loss of US$21.953m for the first half of 2023, compared to a loss of US$45.786m for the same period of 2022.

Gómez said the present climate made it necessary to take difficult but necessary measures to help the company become sustainable and adapt to the constant changes in the global environment.

“In recent months we have implemented a series of measures to cushion the negative impact of these factors, however, given the magnitude of the current scenario, our efforts are focused on operating as a highly efficient organisation, which is why, with the

management team, we have carried out an exhaustive analysis of the organisational structure in all our operations and offices globally,” the statement continued.

“Based on this, we have decided to reduce some areas of the company, prioritising the projects, strategic objectives and activities that will allow us to face the current situation in the best way.”

In June this year, Camposol announced plans to diversify its portfolio of markets and customers after focusing for several years on its traditional markets of North America, Europe and Asia. The company said it is seeking to opening new markets, mainly in Latin America, with a view to strategic diversification.

In last week’s statement, Gómez said reducing the workforce was “not an easy decision” for the company. “Today we have announced the dismissal of some of our colleagues in different locations. It is important to emphasize that this decision bears no relation to their professional performance,” he said.

“This decision, together with the rest of the measures that we have been implementing for a few weeks, will allow us to move forward in 2023 and put us on the right path so that we can achieve our goals in 2024.”