SSP (SSPG) is set to cut more than half of its workforce in the UK, as management grapples with plummeting sales during lockdown. Around 5,000 staff would be made redundant, a move which would cost SSP somewhere between £8-10m. The group, which generates most of its revenue from catering and retail outlets at airports and railway stations, said that it expects only around a fifth of its units in the UK will have reopened by the autumn.
Sales in June are tracking at only a tenth of last year’s level, although the group noted that performance was beginning to recover in continental in Europe and North America where lockdowns were gradually easing.
SSP said that it has not started restructuring on a material scale in other geographies due to longer durations of furlough support, expectations of a more rapid recovery, and contractual lay-off arrangements.
