Kraft Heinz to cut 2,500 jobs

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Kraft Heinz says it is cutting about 2,500 jobs as part of its plan to slash costs after the food companies combined.

Spokesman Michael Mullen says affected workers are in the U.S. and Canada and were to be notified in person.

About 700 of the cuts were coming in Northfield, Ill., where Kraft had been headquartered.

The company would not specify where other cuts were taking place but said that all the jobs were salaried. It said none of the job cuts involved factory workers.

The Kraft Heinz Co. said it had a total of around 46,600 employees before the cuts. That included about 1,900 in Northfield.

The job cuts are not surprising, given the reputation of the company’s management on Wall Street.

The combination of Pittsburgh-based Heinz and Kraft earlier this year was engineered by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital, which has become known for its tight cost controls.

Bernardo Hees – a 3G partner – is CEO of the merged Kraft Heinz.

Hees already had overseen cost-cutting at Heinz since the ketchup maker was taken over in 2013 in a prior partnership between 3G and Berkshire.

That means the cuts announced Wednesday mostly affect people on the Kraft side of the business.