Nestle to cut thousands of jobs worldwide as part of cost cutting drive

The world’s largest packaged food and drink company, Nestle is set to lay off 12,000 employees globally as its new CEO, Philipp Navratil, begins an extensive restructuring effort aimed at reviving the company’s growth.

Nestle owns hundreds of well-known brands, including Nescafe, Maggi, and KitKat.

In an effort to reduce costs and boost efficiency, the company announced on Thursday that it will eliminate 12,000 white-collar positions and an additional 4,000 roles in manufacturing and supply chain operations over the next two years, representing about 6% of its global workforce.

The company stated that some white-collar roles will be replaced by automation as part of its broader push for “operational efficiency.”

However, Nestle’s share price was up 7.5% shortly after its trading update and job cuts were announced to have better reach and sales.

In a LinkedIn post, CEO Philipp Navratil wrote, “We are transforming how we work. We are evolving to simplify our organization and automate our processes. To that end, we are making the hard but necessary decision to reduce headcount globally over the next two years. We will do this with respect and transparency. We are also increasing our savings target to CHF 3 billion by the end of 2027.”

Nestle’s sales declined 1.9% year-over-year to approximately $82.8 billion in the first nine months of 2025. However, organic sales, which exclude currency fluctuations and acquisitions, rose 3.3% during the same period, indicating underlying business growth despite adverse currency effects.

A Nestlé spokesperson said, “This initiative is focused on transforming our ways of working, streamlining the organization and processes, and leveraging digitalisation and automation.”

The spokesperson added that the workforce reduction will affect employees globally,“It will affect each market in a different way, and each market will prepare its own plan. We are not in a position to share more details at this stage.”