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Eastman Kodak restructure leads to 15,000 job cuts

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Sales at Eastman Kodaks Commercial Imaging division emerged as one of the few strong performers in a generally disappointing set of annual results that heralded the loss of up to 15,000 jobs across the group.

The job cuts represent a fifth of the worldwide workforce and will cost up to 922m in restructuring charges.

Most of the changes will occur as the company attempts to migrate its business strategy from its photographic film market to digital technology.

Restructuring plans include reducing manufacturing space by a third, consolidating operations and disposing of surplus assets in order to save 542m annually by 2007.

The companys results for the year to 31 December 2003 show that sales increased 10% to 2.05bn, although excluding exchange rate changes this was only 4%. Kodaks net earnings fell by two thirds to 143.8m.

Kodaks Commercial Imaging divisions sales increased 9% to 234.3m, while earnings from operations were unchanged at 26.6m.

Kodak completed the 130m acquisition of Scitex Digital Printing (SDP) earlier this year. SDP now operates as Kodak Versamark.

Eastman Kodaks UK corporate PR manager Jenny Wild said: This announcement only came through today [Thursday 22 January]. Many of the job cuts will take place in 2006 and it is too early for us to be specific about geographic locations or industry segments.

By John Davies