Copenhagen Malmo Port (CMP) has laid off 40 employees due to dwindling cruise and car carrier trades.
“The crisis as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic is having a severe negative impact on the port,” it said in a statement.
Despite a series of measures taken to minimise the impact — such as cost-saving measures and financial assistance from the government — CMP said it had been “forced to give notice of redundancy”.
“With an Asian region that has not yet regained normal capacity, with a closed Europe, and with a US that has been hit really hard by the coronavirus crisis, the consequences for trade and tourism in this region are enormous,” it said.
“With car factories shut down and the plummeting of sales of newly produced cars, this unavoidably has a major impact on Malmo, which is Scandinavia’s largest car port.
“In addition, CMP is strongly affected by a closed cruise industry and a significant decline in most other business segments, both in Denmark and Sweden.”
CMP chief executive Barbara Scheel Agersnap said it was a “difficult message” to give to the employees.
“It is with much regret that we see no other way out than to serve notice of lay-offs,” she said.
“The declines in the number of calls and handled volumes, and thus loss of revenue, are too large.”
CMP said that, so far, no redundancies had been announced for its operations in Denmark, but they could not be ruled out later in the year if things do not improve.
“For CMP to continue to be a healthy business, adaptations to the new reality are necessary, even if this hurts terribly,” Agersnap said.
“The intention is to minimise the number of redundancies and at the same time make it possible for CMP to ride out the crisis in the best possible way, so that we will be well equipped to meet the market and its demand when the corona crisis has passed.”
