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Forestry giant to slash 2,000 jobs

Swedish forestry and paper giant Stora Enso has recorded a third quarter profit before tax of 93 million euros. The figure is below analysts expectations and less than half the profit for the same quarter last year, 196.4 million euros.

Published: 27 October 2005 10:01 CEST

The company says it will now implement a far-reaching cost-cutting programme, which will mean the loss of 2,000 jobs.

As well as four production units which will be shut down, Stora Enso plans to sell six units. The company will also merge the operations of a number of paper factories, including Skutskär and Norrsundet in Sweden.

The savings are expected to boost profits before tax by 300 million euros a year from the middle of 2007 onwards.

Half of the employees who will be made redundant are office staff and the company said that more than half of the cuts will be made in the Nordic countries. The rest will made elsewhere in Europe.

Sales in the third quarter rose to 3.2 billion euros, up from 3 billion but, again, lower than expectations.

WTO rules US tariffs on Spanish olives breach rules

Farmers had just begun harvesting olives in southern Spain when former US President Donald Trump soured the mood with the tariffs' announcement. Photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP

Former US president Donald Trump’s administration slapped extra tariffs on Spain’s iconic agricultural export in 2018, considering their olives were subsidised and being dumped on the US market at prices below their real value.

The combined rates of the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties go as high as 44 percent.

The European Commission, which handles trade policy for the 27 EU states, said the move was unacceptable and turned to the WTO, where a panel of experts was appointed to examine the case.

In Friday’s ruling, the WTO panel agreed with the EU’s argument that the anti-subsidy duties were illegal.

But it did not support its stance that the US anti-dumping duties violated international trade rules.

The panel said it “recommended that the United States bring its measures into conformity with its obligations”.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis hailed the ruling, pointing out that the US duties “severely hit Spanish olive producers.”

Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid, called by the olive sector — Demonstrators take part in a 2019 protest in Madrid called by the olive sector to denounce low prices of olive oil and the 25 percent tariff that Spanish olives and olive oil faced in the United States. (Photo by PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)

“We now expect the US to take the appropriate steps to implement the WTO ruling, so that exports of ripe olives from Spain to the US can resume under normal conditions,” he said.

The European Commission charges that Spain’s exports of ripe olives to the United States, which previously raked in €67 million ($75.6 million) annually, have shrunk by nearly 60 percent since the duties were imposed.

The office of the US Trade Representative in Washington did not immediately comment on the ruling.

According to WTO rules, the parties have 60 days to file for an appeal.

If the United States does file an appeal though, it would basically amount to a veto of the ruling.

That is because the WTO Appellate Body — also known as the supreme court of world trade — stopped functioning in late 2019 after Washington blocked the appointment of new judges.

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