PRESS CONFERENCE: BERDEN LABORATORIES CEO ERIC DUMONPIERRE ADDRESSES RECENT NGO ATTACKS

PRESS CONFERENCE: BERDEN LABORATORIES CEO ERIC DUMONPIERRE ADDRESSES RECENT NGO ATTACKS
24/11/2010 à 11h46 - mis à jour le 24/11/2010 à 11h52 | 7 vues | 0 réactions


BUSINESS

TRANSCRIPT: BERDEN LABORATORIES CEO ERIC DUMONPIERRE ADDRESSES RECENT NGO ATTACKS

November 23, 2010


Eric Dumonpierre held an evening press conference Monday, with the Laboratoires Berden crisis as the main topic. Before taking questions, he gave a brief speech. Here is a transcript of the speech and news conference:


Eric Dumonpierre: Good evening, everybody. Please be seated.

Before I take your questions tonight, I'd like to speak briefly about the state of our business and why I believe we need to put a recovery plan in motion as soon as possible.

Laboratoires Berden has built a large part of its success and international reputation on its human and social policy. A pacesetter in training and profit-sharing, Laboratoires Berden was also one of the first companies to sign international agreements with union organizations.

Today, the Laboratoires are regularly ranked among the best local employers. And in a fast-moving business context, Laboratoires Berden continues to reinvent itself to meet new challenges.

For over thirty years, relationship management and social involvement at Laboratoires Berden has been based on the conviction that there can be no sustainable business development without human development. The two go hand in hand, even as conditions change - for clearly, expectations today are not the same as in the past, with new challenges appearing all the time. This involvement has been shown at several occasions : we have recently been awarded by the AFSUD of the Diversity and Mixity Labels; we have also created with Professor Humus a not-for-profit organization : the Gremleen Berden Lab which aims at reducing poverty by bringing health through innovative medicine to children using a unique community-based business model.

However, in order to improve the effectiveness and productivity of our operations and ensure the long term sustainability of Laboratoires Berden, the company has had to undertake restructuring programs. It might also have to do so in the future. That is how business goes. Laboratoires Berden has strong social and societal commitments but it is a for-profit organization, and as such, is entitled to remain efficient while under the continuous stress of competition.

We are very conscious of the effect restructuring has on our employees and if options exist where we can achieve our financial goals and still preserve jobs we will do everything we can to do so. We aim to treat our employees with dignity and respect and offer a wide range of support for all affected employees. This includes a competitive severance package and outplacement support such as assistance in finding alternative employment, career counseling and retraining.

It has been the toughest decision I had to make in my life but we had to close our site of Bectot. This was a question of life and death for the Laboratoires Berden. We have imagined hundreds of other scenarios but only one was sustainable: localize our production of Mutorex in the City of Roukarta in Mabhouti. My only mistake might have been, because the difficulty of the decision, to have taken it too late. As a consequence, Bernard Le Montron has inherited from the quasi-impossible task to restart the production in a few weeks.

Bernard Le Montron has been with us for 25 years and who has always shown a complete alignment with our values and our strong commitment for a sustainable development.

We must say, he has been very successful in his mission with regard to production. If Laboratoires Berden still exists, it is highly to the promptness and high effectiveness of M. Le Montron. Furthermore, despite the time constraints and production issues, M. Le Montron has also been very active on the social side of the project. Right from the beginning, he has insisted on building a program aiming at sending underprivileged Mabhuti children to school, while offering them a job at Laboratoires Berden a few hours a day. The children of the Berden Academy will be able to acquire fundamental knowledge to build their future while helping their family to survive.

However, the social situation he inherited was worse than the one we imagined. Previous owners of the plant had much lower standards than Laboratoires Berden's. We recognize that we have not yet reached the objectives we had set for ourselves in Mabhuti. The recent declaration of a Laboratoires Berden's employee illustrates this fact, and we do not deny that we still have some work to do. But let this supplementary testimony be taken as proof that our social and societal values are shared among all of our employees. It gives me pride for my employees and hence, it gives me further motivation to accelerate our program.

We have already asked the NGO "United for a Sustainable South” to help us on this project and to work hand in hand with us. I will fly over to Mabhuti with our HR SVP Ye-Chui Khan, within the very next days in order visit the plant. I will reaffirm my full confidence in all of our employees and in our COO Bernard Le Montron; I will evaluate by myself the progress which have been made and the progress still to be made. I am confident that we will collectively meet this new social challenge. We will set up another conference to give you an update on the results of our actions in Mabhuti.

Nobody can say the Laboratoires Berden do not take their part of the burden. Thank you everyone.


Transcript

Jean-Pierre Lebon

Associated Press of France
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