Schwartz owner McCormick UK is to make a raft of redundancies across its sales team, The Grocer has learned.
It is understood the spices and seasonings giant plans to make at least 17 staff redundant in its field sales team, which is resposible for delivering orders to the mults and overseeing merchandising.
A spokesman for McCormick told The Grocer it was “optimising our route-to-market model to ensure our products are available to consumers seven days a week” as a result of “the strong demand for our products and the changing dynamics of the UK grocery landscape”.
“In addition, and as part of our ongoing efforts to continually strengthen customer service levels, we have made some necessary changes to our UK routes. Unfortunately this has led to some redundancies and we are offering our full support and assistance to all impacted colleagues.”
An industry source said some staff were “fearful and really stressed out, many cannot sleep”, and suggested the changes to routes meant staff may not be able to visit as many shops per day.
The cut came “after a few bumper years during Covid when everyone was stuck at home cooking and baking”, they added.
McCormick’s French’s condiments brand, for instance, grew its value by 19.6% to £4.3m in the supermarkets last year [NielsenIQ 52 w/e 11 September 2021].
It comes as McCormick UK’s global parent company in January reported a 13% rise in sales for the year ending 30 November 2021. Sales were down in its wider EMEA region by 5%, but that was “due to lapping substantially higher demand in the year-ago period”, the business said.
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