ADM says job-cuts plan now will eliminate 1,200

[February 22, 2012]  CHAMPAIGN (AP) -- Archer Daniels Midland Co. said Tuesday that it is firing 175 people at its headquarters in Illinois as part of a plan to cut what it now says will be 1,200 mostly salaried jobs across the company.

Decatur-based ADM said earlier this year that it planned to cut 1,000 jobs through a combination of layoffs and buyouts.

The company wouldn't provide specifics about where other cuts are happening, but it said it should be finished eliminating jobs in the United States this week. Elsewhere, the process will continue.

"We expect a total of about 1,200 when we're done with this process in the coming months," ADM spokesman David Weintraub said.

ADM said that in addition to the layoffs at its headquarters, 160 employees at the company's other locations in Decatur agreed to take buyouts. In all, the 335 positions amount to about 8 percent of the company's roughly 4,000 workers in Decatur. The company is the largest employer in the city of 76,000.

ADM has about 30,000 employees around the world. Aside from the Decatur headquarters, the company has corporate offices in Switzerland, Brazil and China.

Company executives have said the job cuts and other measures will save ADM about $100 million.

The company announced plans to cut its workforce just before announcing that its profits in its most recent quarter, while still $80 million, had dropped almost 90 percent.

ADM has endured sharp swings in the prices of the corn and soybeans the company both trades and turns into a wide range of products, from ethanol to food additives and high-fructose corn syrup.

[Associated Press; By DAVID MERCER]

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