Schaeffler to cut 3,460 European jobs and close five sites

Schaeffler is to remove a net 3,460 positions across 16 European locations and close five sites, four of them in Germany. The new cost reduction programme arrives after the restructuring measures announced in November 2024 have been completed and after 1,800 partial retirement agreements were concluded in early October.

The supplier’s stated aims are to reduce overcapacity, adjust development capacity, lower personnel costs and reduce organisational complexity.

Where the cuts fall and the sites close

Schaeffler has not waited to see what the 2024 measures and the partial retirement deals would achieve on their own. It has moved straight to a further programme, which suggests the earlier steps did not close the gap between the capacity it carries and the work it expects to win.

Roughly 50 per cent of the affected positions are in production, 30 per cent in research and development and 20 per cent in other functional areas. Production taking the largest share is unsurprising. The 30 per cent in R&D is the figure that deserves attention, because it shows engineering capacity being sized-down alongside factory capacity rather than protected from it.

Of the five closures planned, the two largest German cases are in the Powertrain & Chassis division. The Dortmund plant employs 430 people and the Morbach site 160, and both manufacture products for internal combustion engines.

Schaeffler also plans to discontinue operations at its Berlin site, which has about 270 employees.

Schwalbach is a different case. The site is to close, but a large portion of its approximately 385 employees is expected to transfer to the Schaeffler site in Frankfurt. Around 190 positions will be affected by the reduction in total. The fifth closure is outside Germany, at Herstal in Belgium, where about 15 people work.

JLR cuts 4,000 jobs to fix an underloaded plant network

On September 7, 2026, JLR CEO PB Balaji confirmed 4,000 job cuts, as the carmaker moves to shore up its competitiveness against mounting headwinds across the automotive sector.

Trimming the rest of the footprint

Closures, however, are only part of the plan. Schaeffler intends to discontinue toolmaking at Höchstadt and to adjust special machinery manufacturing at Erlangen and Schweinfurt. Toolmaking and special machinery sit behind the production lines rather than on them, and their inclusion shows the review reaching beyond the product plants themselves.

Capacity and structural adjustments are also planned at Herzogenaurach, Bühl, Höchstadt, Nürnberg and Regensburg. Beyond Germany, production and development capacities will be adjusted at Haguenau and Toulouse in France and at Skalica and Kysuce in Slovakia. Detailed information on the plans for each location will be presented at local staff meetings.

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What 9% and 18% mean in practice

Although regionally European, Germany carries the bulk of the burden of these cuts. The planned reduction of 2,660 positions there accounts for roughly three quarters of the European total. Measured against a core workforce of 31,957 employees (as of 30 September 2026), Schaeffler puts the German reduction at approximately nine per cent of existing positions by 2028.

That figure, however, actually understates the cumulative effect. Once job reductions from legacy programmes and the 1,800 partial retirement agreements already signed are added, the share rises to approximately 18 per cent.

Nearly one in five German positions will have gone by 2028 through a mix of closures, retirement arrangements and earlier programmes.

The question for the supply base

For Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, although the pattern may be familiar - the scale is not. Plants tied to combustion products are closing, engineering is being resized and even support functions such as toolmaking are under review.

Each plant on the list is a reminder that capacity built for one powertrain era does not retire itself. But a question arises: How many other suppliers are carrying capacity they have not yet decided to remove?