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KEMET Lays Off 640 Employees, 12% of It's Salaried Workforce

Submitted by: John Warner on Jul 31, 2008 at 9:09 am Tagged with: capacitors, electronic components Source: KEMET

GREENVILLE, S.C., July 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- KEMET Corporation (NYSE: KEM) announced today that it will rationalize certain corporate staff and manufacturing support functions to further reduce costs and achieve its financial goals. Approximately 640 employees will be affected as a result of this action. The salaried workforce affected represents approximately 12% of the Company's salaried workforce.

The Company expects to reduce its support costs by approximately $24 million in the remainder of the current fiscal year (approx. $36 million on a full-year basis), and will accrue a severance expense of approximately $20 million, primarily in the quarter ended September 2008. Approximately 200 employees will be affected in the Company's U.S. operations, with the balance at various facilities within Europe, Mexico and Asia.

"It is imperative that we match our support costs to the condition of our current market environment," said Per Loof, KEMET's Chief Executive Officer. "The actions we are taking today are painful and difficult for the KEMET family. However, we must minimize our costs at the support level while maintaining world-class service, product innovation, and quality to successfully compete in our market and reach our goals. We are fully committed to executing our strategies, which are designed to return KEMET to profitability and create shareholder value," continued Loof.

KEMET Corporation (KEM) applies world-class service and quality to deliver industry-leading, high-performance capacitance solutions to its customers around the world. KEMET offers the world's most complete line of surface-mount and through-hole capacitor technologies across tantalum, ceramic, film, aluminum, electrolytic, and paper dielectrics. KEMET's common stock is listed on The New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KEM. Additional information about KEMET can be found at http://www.kemet.com