Panasonic has recently announced that 15,000 jobs will be cut from its worldwide workforce and 27 plants will close in the next year, but Panasonic Australia are very confident that this news will barely affect them locally in Australia.
In an interview with Appliance Retailer this morning, Steve Rust, managing director of Panasonic Australia, has commented that locally the company has been performing very strongly and is in fact exceeding their sales targets.
“Panasonic actually grew 9 per cent last year and in the two month period of November and December we were actually up 35 per cent,” said Rust.
Of course Rust could not completely rule out job cuts, but he was very confident that due to the exceptionally strong results of Panasonic Australia, they will be unaffected.
“I am not anticipating any significant impact from this announcement at this stage, we will still remain to be aggressive in the Australian market,” said Rust.
Rust also commented that recent government initiatives like lower interest rates and the stimulus package really helped the Australian side of the company, and aided them in avoiding the fate of some of their overseas counterparts.
“I think we really benefited from the various government initiatives that were implemented because it helped to encourage consumer spending.”
According to Rust, Panasonic Australia are actually hiring at the moment with four open positions currently available. So if anything they are expanding their workforce.
Evidently Panasonic has been hit very hard globally by the downturn in the economy and the changing habits of consumers, but thankfully there is only good news from the Australian side.