South Korean shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) plans to slash its workforce by 12,000 to 30,000 by 2019 within its cost cutting measures.

“We are planning to reduce the number of employees to a similar level to 2009 and 2010 when management efficiency was the highest,” DSME CEO Jung Sung-leep is quoted as saying by the Korea Herald at a press conference at the firm’s headquarters in Seoul.

The job cuts are expected to be implemented gradually across the board.

At the referred period, the company had 30,000 employees, and generated KRW 12 trillion (USD 9 billion) in annual sales, Jung said, whereas now the shipbuilder has 42,000 people.

The company has been in an intensive restructuring mode, offloading its non-core businesses and cutting workforce so as to boost liquidity badly hit by the industry slump.

The announcement comes on the back of DSME’s USD 4.3 billion reported loss for the full year of 2015 caused by falling number of newbuilding orders and further delivery delays in its offshore segment.

The shipbuilder hopes for a turnaround this year as it projects KRW 500 billion (USD 415 million) in operating profits for the first quarter of this year.

From: World Maritime News