tesa SE withdraws from Harrislee location

As scheduled, tesa SE will withdraw from the site in Harrislee, near Flensburg, at the end of the year. The plant here, with 53 employees, produced the well known products tesa Moll® and tesa Powerstrips® as well as double-sided mounting tapes.

Working together with the Flensburger entrepreneur and proprietor of the Logotape Group based in Harrislee, Dr Ulrich Wesselmann, the executive management and works council were able to put together a socially compatible model that makes it possible to save some of the former jobs for employees at the site and to create new jobs for almost all the remaining employees.
Production of tesamoll®, along with 14 employees, will be taken over by the company Nordic Tape GmbH & Co. KG, a subsidiary of the Logotape Group, and will remain at the site. In addition, Wesselmann has established an additional production business, MCD GmbH & Co. KG, on the grounds of the former tesa plant. In the future, this business will manufacture products including packaging materials made from renewable raw materials. It is planned that permanent jobs will be created here for nearly all other employees of the former tesa plant. Additional new jobs may also be created through the planned development of the new businesses. The exemplary model for securing the site and jobs is being backed by the Ministry of Economics of Schleswig-Holstein, the Flensburg employment agency and the close co-operation with the mayor of the Municipality of Harrislee, Dr. Wolfgang Buschmann. The union IGBCE has guaranteed that jobs will be saved by finalizing two company wage agreements.

Production of tesa Powerstrips® and mounting tapes is being shifted to the tesa plant in Offenburg for the future.

“We have exploited all possibilities to keep jobs,” said the works council chairman of the former tesa plant at Harrislee, Uwe Blunck. “Negotiations were not easy but thankfully everyone involved pulled together in the end and tesa faced up to its social responsibility.”

Thomas Fuchs, head of human resources and a member of executive management at tesa SE: “Our joint efforts paid off as we have succeeded in finding a solution which makes a contribution to securing the future of our company as well as creating a long term perspective for the employees affected in the region. At the same time it promotes meaningful entrepreneurial commitment with the prospect that further jobs will be created there.”

The company’s withdrawal from the Harrislee location is part of the package of capacity adjustment measures, decided in April, with which tesa is responding to the substantial decline in sales the company has seen as a result of the crisis.

tesa SE, an affiliate of Beiersdorf AG, well known in Germany for tesafilm® as well as many other self-adhesive products, generates about three quarters of its worldwide turnover – recently 860 million euros – with self-adhesive system solutions for industry, in particular the automotive and electronic industry. These sectors were particularly affected by the economic crisis in 2009. The tesa group employs around 3,900 employees worldwide.