Today, the firm announced it was preparing to cut thousands of jobs – weeks after it had confirmed that up to 9,000 employees could be axed from the Derby engineering giant. It announced that in order to continue to run, around £1billion would need to be saved throughout its global workforce. And back in May, Paul Everitt – chief executive at ADS Group – told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the industry would take “another three to five years” to fully stabilise after the outbreak.
Mr Everitt, whose firm represents companies such as Rolls-Royce, explained that similar businesses would not experience pre-COVID-19 levels of production for many years to come.
He said: “I think there is an inevitable resizing and I think the signal we’ve seen both from Airbus, Boeing and GE and now Rolls-Royce clearly signals that we are not anticipating the sort of production levels that we were planning for at the beginning of this year returning perhaps for another three to five years.
“So inevitably that means a lot of businesses are going to have to work out how they are going to structure their businesses to be competitive.”
At the time of his comments, Rolls-Royce advised its staff that thousands of jobs were at risk – with its UK base in Derby most affected.
Company chiefs claimed the cuts came due to the significant downturn in demands, as well as the limitations placed on air travel throughout the coronavirus crisis.
This week, in a statement, Rolls-Royce said that so far it had received at least 3,000 notifications from employees that they would entertain discussions on voluntary redundancies.
Around two-thirds of those employees are preparing to leave by the end of August, the Daily Mirror reports.
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Earlier this year, the firm confirmed these losses would save it £1.3billion but warned that it may take “several years” for the market to go back to normal levels.
The workforce at Rolls-Royce throughout the world stands at 52,000.
Yet so far this year, it has seen £3billion lost amid the halting of orders and demand for plans falling dramatically.
The figures so far show that compared to normal cash flow, this year – in the first six months – £1.1billion less has been received.