ZF announces major restructuring to enhance competitiveness in electromobility

ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a leading global technology company, has announced a significant restructuring plan to enhance its competitiveness and respond to evolving market demands, particularly in electromobility. The strategic realignment will involve a substantial reduction of 11,000 to 14,000 jobs in Germany by 2028.

The restructuring focuses on consolidating ZF’s German operations into larger site networks and creating leaner structures. This move is driven by strong competition, cost pressures, and weak demand for electric vehicles. ZF aims to increase investments in its Commercial Vehicle Technology, Chassis Solutions, Industrial Technology, and Aftermarket divisions, while the Electrified Powertrain Technologies division will face cost reductions due to market challenges.

ZF CEO Dr. Holger Klein emphasised the company’s commitment to positioning itself for the future, ensuring sustainable competitiveness, and making necessary but difficult decisions. The restructuring includes potential site consolidations and workforce adjustments, leveraging partial retirement offers and severance programs to manage the reduction responsibly.

“Our corporate responsibility is to position ZF for the future and to  further develop our locations in Germany in such a way that they are  sustainably competitive and solidly positioned. We are aware that we  also must make difficult but necessary decisions to achieve this. But we  want to come up with the best possible solutions for everyone  involved,” said ZF CEO Dr. Holger Klein.

“We want to consolidate the German locations and merge them into  several location networks. The aim is to create an efficient production  network on the one hand and an efficient organisation of the research  and development areas on the other,” said Prof. Dr. Peter Laier, who is  responsible for Production on the ZF Board of Management. As a result  of the major acquisitions in recent years (TRW, 2015; Wabco, 2020),  the ZF location structure in Germany has gradually expanded. Following  these acquisitions, this currently small-scale location structure is now  being transformed into a sustainable and leaner location network  structure in several phases.

Despite current market difficulties, ZF reaffirms its dedication to electromobility and plans to continue significant investments in this area. The company seeks to strengthen its core operations and improve agility to better respond to rapid market changes.