Ballarpur Industries Ltd. (Bilt) is going for a major voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) in its factories. The Thapar-promoted domestic paper giant is expected to prune close to 10% of its total workforce. In addition to the VRS scheme, Bilt is also gradually decreasing its head-count through the natural route. It is replacing less than half of the retirements from its plants each year.
The VRS programme will primarily cover the material handling division. The company is also considering outsourcing some of its labour requirements. The basis idea behind the decision is to boost labour productivity in congruence with machine up gradation in its plants.
At present Bilt employs close to 15000 people across its six plants in the country of which close to 1300 are likely to be offered the VRS package. This will be separate from the 600 workers in Bipco, the packaging board company of the Bilt group. These workers will be out of the company`s rolls when Bilt formalizes its corporate deal with ITC.
