Nairobi Securities Exchange listed East African Portland Cement (EAPCC) has announced plans to send home 1000 employees in 2017 at a cost of Sh 2 billion.
The cement maker currently has about 1500 workers and said that it will sell an idle 2000 acre piece of land at cost of Sh 10 billion for the purposes of compensating the workers and use the balance for restructuring.
According to its chairman Mr Bill Lay, the company is overstaffed as compared to the rest of its competitors citing 500 workers as the most suitable number. In the year ended June 2016, the company reported a loss Sh 6.1 billion loss as staff costs represented 31 per cent of its revenue at Sh2.7 billion.
According to Business Daily, EAPCC owns more than 14,000 acres of land and the kenyan govt has expressed interest in acquiring the land for the purposes of building industrial parks and extension of the Export Processing Zone.
Share Price Performance
On Thursday at the NSE, the counter nearly touched a 13 year low of Sh 22.25 as shown in the chart below
(Kenyan Wall Street, Business Daily, FT)
