Danone to lay off 2% of North American workforce in July

BROOMFIELD —  Danone North America, the Broomfield-headquartered subsidiary of a French food and beverage umbrella company, will soon lay off more than 2% of its North American workforce.

“Danone North America is a team of more than 6,000 people — known as ‘Danoners’ — across 16 manufacturing facilities, three headquarter locations, one Innovation & Technology Center, and various sales offices and remote work sites throughout the U.S. and Canada,” according to the company’s website. 

Assuming that 6,000 figure is current, Danone plans to lay off more than 120 people next month. The affected employees work “across multiple facilities in the U.S.,” a Danone North America spokesperson told Bizwest in an email Thursday. At least some of those who will lose their jobs are known to work in the Broomfield office, which the city and county of Broomfield in 2022 estimated to include 600 workers.

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“Over the past few years, Danone has continued to make great progress against our Renew Danone and North America growth strategies. This week, we announced several changes to our U.S. organizational structure and operating model that will continue to position our business for long-term, sustainable growth while further enhancing the value we provide our consumers, customers and communities,” the Danone spokesperson said. “As part of these changes, we do have employees who will exit the company in July, impacting just over 2% of our North American team. Parting with colleagues is never an easy decision and we are committed to supporting these individuals with fairness and care, in-line with our Danone values. These changes do not impact our manufacturing processes or the production of Danone products, and therefore will not impact our consumers.”

Renew Danone is a turnaround strategy launched in 2022 soon after Danone CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique was hired. 

“One of the problems we are facing in terms of competitiveness is [the] underperforming of some assets, which have been underperforming for a long time,” he was quoted as saying by industry publication Just Food. “So we will be very determined. If we cannot fix them, we will sell them and then we have no taboo or we have no sacred cows.”

Danone North America was established in Broomfield after the 2017 acquisition of WhiteWave Foods Co. The $10.4 billion deal was, at the time, the largest ever in the natural and organic foods industry.