Dutch brewer Heineken has announced it will cut up to 6000 jobs over the next two years as it faces “challenging market conditions”.
The job cuts amount to almost 7% of the global workforce at the world’s No.2 brewer by market value and follow the resignation in January of CEO Dolf van den Brink.
“We really do this to strengthen our operations and to be able to invest in growth,” CFO Harold van den Broek said.
Van den Brink said: “Productivity has been a top priority in our evergreen strategy… we committed to 400 to 500 million euros ($476 million to $600 million) of savings on an annual basis, and this is a first operationalisation of that debt commitment.”
He acknowledged that the cuts came “partly also due to AI, or let’s say digitization.”
Heineken announced its full year FY25 results yesterday, which saw total volume declined 1.2%, with consolidated volume down 2.1% and licensed volume up 17.8%.
Licensed volume was led by the growth of Heineken and Amstel by the brewer’s associate partner China Resources Beer in China, as well as by strong performances in Cameroon, and at joint-venture partner Compañía de las Cervecerías Unidas (CCU) in South America.
Net revenue grew 1.6%, supported by growth in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Vietnam and India.
Heinken’s low & no-alcohol (LoNo) portfolio was highlighted as a strong point for the brewer. Volume by a low-single-digit with double-digit growth in 18 markets. Notable strong performances were in the United States, Canada and Spain.
Based on current conditions in the macro-economic landscape, Heineken said it was assuming an unchanged consumer environment in most of its markets and remained “prudent in our expectations for 2026”.