Sany denies large-scale staff layoff

Sany Heavy Industry Co Ltd, China's leading construction equipment company, denied a report that it has laid off 30 percent of its employees.

"The staff turnover in our company remains normal and there isn't a large-scale layoff here," a senior official of the construction machinery manufacturer told the website Ce.cn.

The company executive said that there is no need for Sany to lay off significant number of employees because of two reasons. First, the construction machinery industry in China has good prospects despite a slump of nearly 20 percent this year, with the country's GDP growing annually at more than 8 percent every year and the process of urbanization continuing. Second, Sany's own steady growth makes it unnecessary to do that.

Compared with other enterprises in the industry, Sany generated a stable growth better than the market as a whole.

In the first three months of the year, Sany's revenues amounted to 14.68 billion yuan ($2.31 billion), registering a year-on-year growth of 4.93 percent. It continued to maintain stable growth in the second quarter.

In the first half of this year, Sany's exports increased 130 percent from a year earlier and its international business grew more than 10 percent after its acquisition of the German concrete pump maker Putzmeister Holding GmbH at the beginning of this year.

Over the past few years, the construction machinery industry has experienced rapid development. As the leading company in the sector, Sany's annual growth remained more than 50 percent every year. From last year, due to the slowdown in the sector, Sany began to control the size of its workforce. According to a report released by the recruiting service website 51job.com in November 2011, the average dismissal rate in China's manufacturing industry last year was 20.5 percent. The figure for Sany has been between 5 and 10 percent in recent years. By the end of 2011, the number of employees in Sany Heavy Industry totaled 51,000 and the number of staff who quit the company stood between 2,500 and 5,000.

huangying@chinadaily.com.cn