Draexlmaier halts layoffs of 359 Zrenjanin workers

The redundancy programme covering 359 employees at Draexlmaier’s Zrenjanin plant has been suspended with immediate effect. The German manufacturer of automotive wiring harnesses said it was withdrawing the measure before the deadline by which that group of workers was due to leave the company.

The employees covered by the programme had agreed to depart by the end of July 2026. That arrangement followed the company’s earlier message that a reduction in Zrenjanin was unavoidable, because European car production was falling and new orders were not sufficient to fill the plant’s capacity. With the programme suspended, those agreements go unused and the factory keeps a workforce it had written off only weeks earlier.

The sequence is unusually compressed by industry standards: first the warning that the plant did not have enough work, then departure agreements with an end-of-July deadline, then the suspension of the entire programme before that deadline expired. That pace normally indicates a decision taken on fresh order data rather than on a review of a previously adopted plan.

Why did the German supplier reverse its layoff decision?

The company points to a market shift it did not expect to arrive this quickly. Guido Mahnelt, head of operations for Eastern Europe, said Draexlmaier is seeing stronger demand in the e-mobility sector, driven by rising fuel costs and new subsidy schemes being introduced across European countries. Translated into production terms: when electric vehicles sell faster, demand for wiring harnesses rises, and that is precisely the work the Zrenjanin plant already does.

For a tier-one supplier, this kind of reversal is not cosmetic. Wiring harnesses are contracted per vehicle platform and tied to a multi-year cycle, so a single awarded platform changes capacity utilisation over a far longer horizon than an individual quarterly order. That is why the company is now reconsidering where to place new work rather than continuing to shrink its plant network.

The immediate benefit is local. Draexlmaier has been among the largest employers in Zrenjanin for years, so removing 359 people from the payroll would have hit both their households and local payroll tax revenue. The Banat labour market has no other industrial employer capable of absorbing that many workers with the same profile at short notice.

What comes next for the Zrenjanin plant

A decision on awarding new projects to the Serbian plant is expected within the coming weeks. Tobias Afsali, vice president for global human resources, said the company has committed and loyal employees in Serbia and that the new projects are in their final decision phase. The company also says it is in close contact with state authorities to find a swift and sustainable solution for the Zrenjanin site.

The distinction between a suspension and a guarantee still stands. The redundancy programme has been stopped, but the production programme has not been confirmed: until the final decision on projects is published, the Zrenjanin plant is operating on an extended deadline rather than on a new contract. The company’s next announcement, the one on specific platform awards, is the only one that will show how durable this pause really is.

Do you believe Draexlmaier will genuinely direct new work to Zrenjanin, or is the suspension of layoffs simply a delay of the same outcome?