As a result, in April, the company shed eight workers from its UK subsidiary, a quarter of the former staff of 30, by seeking voluntary redundancies. Other countries’ operations have also been cut, the company said.
“This however does not mean that the business volume in England will be reduced but we want to orientate more on the business of complex engineering solutions,” the company said.
R Stahl says its material handling division has grown continuously since the beginning of this re-orientation project in 2004.
R Stahl’s explosion protection division is unaffected.
The corporate re-focus made sense, according to one ex-employee.
“From what I understood, the situation was that R Stahl was doing a lot of work that was perhaps outside the scope of persons in the building,” said Peter Dajavs, a crane engineer who left the company during the cuts.
He said that R Stahl wanted to re-focus its business. “They decided to key in to target areas – explosion-proof equipment, chain hoists and series product sales,” he said.
“I can understand that from their point of view they are just trying to hone in on a market where they excel. They looked throughout the business, and found a market where they don’t make huge returns, but stable ones, and which are low risk,” Dajavs said.
After leaving R Stahl, Dajavs became a director of special crane builder GB Systematic based in Stourbridge, West Midlands, UK. He joins relative Peter Dajavs, a former Lloyds British division manager.
