Cellnet sheds 19 staff

ASX-listed distributor, Cellnet (ASX: CLT), has made 19 staff redundant following a review of staff levels.

In a statement, managing director, Stephen Harrison, said the job losses were the "unfortunate consequence" of improvements made to the company's operational efficiencies in recent months.

He told ARN Cellnet had made a number of substantial changes over the last six months to its internal processes in back-end distributor, finance and the IT area.

"These things were planned to improve the business and give us much better margins and growth," Harrison said.

The company has cut 12 staff from its warehouse operations, as well as made retrenchments across HR, finance and IT support teams. However, Harrison pointed out it had recently increased its sales headcount to support its retail, accessory and IT distribution businesses. These included new state managers in NSW and Queensland as well as a number of business development managers and sales staff in Perth and SA.

Cellnet has also been beefing up stock levels at its Victorian warehouse.

"Our strategy is to move more stock out of Brisbane and into the states - especially our IT stock," Harrison said. "We've picked up efficiencies by moving people out of Brisbane and into the states."

Harrison, who stepped back into the managing director's role in August last year, immediately announced his intention to return to the distributor's telco roots and review its IT business. At the time, he claimed there were no intentions to cut staff.

The distributor retained more than 200 staff in Australia, Harrison said.

With the processes in place and a new budget, Cellnet was moving in the right direction, he said.

"Moving forward it's up to the sales people ...it's a tough market - fuel is up, interest rates are up and retail is in a slump," Harrison said.