Metricon to slash almost 10pc of staff as it faces headwinds in the construction sector

Australia’s largest home builder will slash almost 10 per cent of its staff as it struggles to cope with the headwinds facing the construction sector.

Metricon to slash staff numbers by 9 per cent.

Troubled building giant Metricon will slash almost 10 per cent of its staff to counter the headwinds plaguing the construction sector.

Metricon acting chief executive Peter Langfelder confirmed that the nation’s leading home builder is undergoing an internal restructure of its business.

The company has started a consultation process with its 2500 or so staff that will lead to redundancies and a 9 per cent reduction in the size of its workforce. That equates to around 225 jobs being cut.

The Melbourne-based company has started a consultation process that will lead to redundancies across the national business in line with housing demand that is expected to settle at pre-pandemic levels in the wake of the homebuilding boom over the last two years.

Mr Langfelder said he expected that most of the roles impacted will be at the front-end of the business, predominantly in sales and marketing roles.

“With the current headwinds buffeting the industry, specifically labour costs due to competition for skills, combined with present global material cost hikes and with our very strong existing pipeline of work, we need to carefully balance the pipeline of new builds with the construction side of the business,” he said.

“We are working to restructure our front-end of the business given the current climate and the

need to move forward efficiently. We are committed to looking after any of our people who may be impacted by these proposed changes, and they will continue to have ongoing access to the company’s support and mental health services.”

Metricon is cutting its staff by 9 per cent.

Mr Langfelder said Metricon is rebalancing the business’ focus over the next 18 months on executing builds as quickly and efficiently as possible while maintaining a steady pipeline of work.

“We have previously said that our company has a proven history of success and remains profitable and viable, with the full support of our key stakeholders – this remains the case today,” he said.

Metricon still expects to enter into contracts for 100 homes every week, on average, which aligns with pre-pandemic levels.

“Our future construction pipeline shows no sign of slowing with more than 6000 site-starts scheduled for 2023,” Mr Langfelder said.

In the last 12 months the construction industry suffered a perfect storm of conditions, including supply chain disruptions, skilled labour shortages, skyrocketing costs of materials and logistics and extreme weather events.

Household names such as Probuild, Privium, BA Murphy, Condev, ABD Group, Waterford Homes and Pivotal Homes were just few of the building sector’s casualties in the last 12 months.

Metricon’s financial health has also been under considerable scrutiny this year, with the country’s largest home builder finally reaching a rescue deal with its lender, the Commonwealth Bank, in May.

In May its co-founder and chief executive Mario Biasin suddenly passed away, from what the company later attributed to mental health issues.

In July Metricon put 56 display homes worth about $65m up for sale across four states.

Mr Langfelder said the sales process was a regular part of the company’s business cycle and the company’s owners would also ­inject $30m into the business.

Metricon has $17m worth of vacant land in NSW and Queensland for sale.