A drinks giant with more than a dozen Scotch distilleries has announced plans to cut 900 jobs.
Pernod Ricard, owners of The Glenlivet, Aberlour and Chivas Regal whiskies, yesterday said it was shedding 5% of its global workforce as it looks to save £120 million.
The company said 100 posts would go at their global headquarters in Paris but refused to comment on where the 800 other redundancies would be found from its global workforce of more than 18,000.
Anti-extravagance laws have cut Pernod’s spirit sales by 23% in China.
Last night the firm’s chief executive, Pierre Pringuet, confirmed the group was pressing ahead with cuts, known internally as the Allegro project.
“We are seriously committed to the Allegro project,” he said. “This operational efficiency project must enable us to maximise our future growth while generating a hard figure of 150 million euros of savings,” he said.
Chief operating officer Alexandre Ricard said the company aims to reinvest one third of those savings into boosting sales of its brands.
The company has also launched new, cheaper brands in China to try to boost sales and is working on boosting its presence in America to make up for some of the Chinese slowdown.
He added: “In this context which will remain challenging, we anticipate a gradual improvement in our sales growth, and we will increase the investment behind our brands and priority innovations in order to sustain long-term growth.”
Pernod Ricard is the world’s second biggest drinks company behind Diageo.
It has 13 distilleries around north and north-east Scotland including sites at Aberlour, Glenlivet and Miltonduff.
Sales of Pernod’s so-called top 14 brands, which include Chivas Regal and Kahlua, fell 2%, dragged down by Martell cognac in China.
Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched an anti-corruption and anti-extravagance campaign.
He said he wanted a “thorough clean-up” of “four forms of decadence formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance”.
He has even banned radio and TV adverts for luxury gifts, claiming that it promotes incorrect values and encourages bribery and corruption.
Overall, the company, which also owns Mumm champagne and the Absolut vodka brand, saw sales slide by 629m Euro to 7.94bn in the full year 2013/14.