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Airbus plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs in its struggling satellite division, a source said Wednesday — the latest sign of trouble for the European aerospace industry.
The source, who is close to talks between management and unions, said the aviation giant had begun informing worker representatives Wednesday morning.
It will hits its entire defence and space division.
Airbus and the main French unions there refused to comment ahead of meetings this afternoon with employee representatives.
Details of the job cuts were not immediately known, the source said on condition of anonymity.
The division employs 35,000 people and last year accounted for about 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) of Airbus’s 65.4 billion in revenue.
Airbus’s net profit fell by 46 percent to 825 million euros in the first half of the year, dragged down by a 989-million euro writedown in its space business.
“The half-year financial performance mainly reflects significant charges in our space business,” Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said in July when announcing the results.
“We are addressing the root causes of these issues.”
The company had already taken a 600-million euro charge in 2023 in the same division.
The European company is the world leader for telecommunications satellites but is facing a drop in demand that has also affected other players in the industry.
France’s Thales earlier this year re-assigned some 1,300 positions in its space division.
Telecommunication and navigation satellites are all made to order, eliminating the possibility of benefitting from economies of scale, unlike in Airbus’s flagship commercial aircraft business.
The division is also facing greater competition from SpaceX and its Starlink constellation of low-orbit satellites.
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