Liebherr Hausgeräte GmbH in Lienz, East Tyrol, wants to employ up to 960 employees in production and production-related areas on short-time work. The short-time work is planned for the months of October, November and December and must be registered with the Public Employment Service (AMS) in Innsbruck in the coming week.
This was confirmed by managing director Holger König to the APA on Thursday. It was said that a meeting had already taken place to discuss the possibilities for short-time working. This was justified by the fact that the market for refrigerators fell dramatically after the corona pandemic boom. He “broke in brutally”.
“Continued declining demand situation”
“The household appliances sector is still in a difficult market environment,” says König. Due to the continuing decline in demand, we are forced to adjust the planning accordingly. “We have already taken various necessary measures at our production site in Lienz to adjust the personnel capacity accordingly and to reduce our inventory level,” the company says.
The current forecasts would now force the company, which employs a total of around 13,400 people in Lienz, to take further measures. It was stressed that these decisions would be made in “close communication between management, HR and the works council” at the Lienz site, in order to overcome the challenges together.
At the beginning of 2025, Liebherr expected the situation to improve because new production lines would start up. Therefore, they do not want to lose the workforce, but are skeptical about whether the application for short-time working will go through. There is currently no company in Austria where short-time working has been approved, mainly because unemployment is relatively low.
The company wants to stick to expansion plans
The company wants to continue its expansion plans in East Tyrol. The largest construction project since the opening began in September 2023. It included a new warehouse with an area of 18,000 square meters for finished equipment and an additional administration building with an area of 650 square meters. In addition, a new production line is to be built to increase capacity by 20 percent. This year, Liebherr wants to build around 250,000 refrigerators in East Tyrol.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
