Italy: An on-going personnel crisis at Italcementi has prompted the company to request unemployment subsidies from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies.

Following a statement from the company on 11 January 2012 that up to 265 workers would be made redundant, Italcementi sought out the Extraordinary Redundancy Fund, a specialist Italian fund designed to help ailing industries.  This loss represents approximately 7.5% of the company's Italian workforce.

In the statement Italcementi announced that layoffs would affect a total of 265 existing employees: 80 at the headquarters of Italcementi, 60 at Group Technical Centre in Bergamo, 115 (out of a total of 1651 employees) in 18 Italian plants and 10 in the company's commercial network.

Outside of Italy the restructuring of the group will include changes in Spain, Belgium, Egypt and the US. 22,000 employees work for Italcementi worldwide, with 3500 in Italy. In November 2011 the company reported a 51.7% drop in third quarter profits despite the sale of its Turkish assets.

Italcementi has not responded to requests for further information from Global Cement.