Schaeffler cuts 3,460 European jobs and points to humanoids, whose €400 million in orders is less than the cuts cost

Schaeffler will cut a net 3,460 positions at 16 European locations, about 2,660 of them in Germany, and close five sites, the German supplier said on Nov. 3 alongside its nine-month results. The program costs about €480 million up front, most of it booked as restructuring provisions this year, and is meant to lift earnings by about €300 million a year from 2030. In the same release, chief operating officer Jochen Schröder named humanoid robotics and defense as future fields, and Schaeffler said at least part of the reduction should be offset by new positions there.

Humanoids cannot carry that promise on the company's own numbers. Chief executive Klaus Rosenfeld said Schaeffler "won new customers and continued to expand our order book" in humanoid robotics, but the results release gives no new figure. The latest is the one Schaeffler published on Oct. 13 and repeated when it opened its Taicang humanoid plant on Oct. 20: incoming orders of about €400 million, after two customers in Greater China signed in the third quarter. The one-off cost of the job program alone is 1.2 times that.

Humanoid orders equal about 2% of nine months' sales

The group's revenue for the first nine months was €17.48 billion. The humanoid orders are about 2.3% of that, and they are spread over years of deliveries of actuators and joint modules. Rosenfeld expects humanoid models in larger series in less than five years, ingenieur.de reported, and said in April that large jumps in sales should not be expected in the short term.

The jobs going are combustion-engine jobs

The closures fall on the old business. Dortmund, with about 430 employees, and Morbach, with about 160, make products for combustion engines in the Powertrain & Chassis division. Operations in Berlin, with about 270 staff, will stop. Schwalbach will be given up, with many of its roughly 385 employees moving to Frankfurt and about 190 positions affected, and a plant of about 15 people in Herstal, Belgium, will close. About half of the cut positions are in production and 30% in research and development, and most of the measures take effect in 2027 and 2028.

That timing is what the humanoid business would have to meet. Schaeffler did not say how many humanoid or defense positions it plans, so the offset has no number to set against 3,460.