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Electrolux President and CEO announces review of refrigerator production in Italy |
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 |
Electrolux President and CEO Hans Stråberg recently commented on
the 2007 results and announced the company would review refrigerator production
in Italy
in the interest of making it more competitive. This is part of the implementation of the companys strategy for
developing innovative products, strengthening the Electrolux brand and cutting
costs in the long term through restructuring.
Investment in the development
of new products has increased 10% over 2006 and investment in brands also rose
in 2007. The Electrolux brand has been strengthened, particularly in Europe. Work
also continues on making production more competitive by relocating to low-cost
countries. In addition, an organic growth of 4% has been achieved in 2007,
which is in line with our target. In North America, sales rose by 2% while the
market declined by almost 6%, and the operation in Latin America reported the
best performance ever. As for Australia, the companys market position has been
reinforced and it achieved considerably higher profitability.
However, the performance by Electrolux appliances in Europe
was a disappointmen, reveals the companys press release. Hans Stråberg stated: As our new products were
well-received by the market, our average prices were higher in all product
categories and virtually every country. In order to deliver our products to
retailers according to plan, we were forced to prioritize time ahead of cost.
This meant that costs for many products were higher than the original targets. We
are working on solving these problems, and we are striving to get costs down to
the planned level during the second half of 2008. As a result, we are going to
implement a review of our refrigerator production in Italy in the interest of
making it more competitive. |