Prague, Sept 16 - Unilever Group plans to gradually reduce production at its Czech unit before eventually shutting it by the second quarter of 2010, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The world's third-biggest food and consumer goods group will lay off all the 634 employees working in the subsidiary in Nelahozeves, just 30 kilometres north-west of the capital Prague.
The company cited "simplification of operations, cost cutting and speeding up innovations" as reasons for scrapping the Czech business.
Many Czech companies, the biggest of which are foreign-owned, were forced to curb production and lay off staff as demand from the recession-stricken West withered.
The small central European economy contracted by a record 5.5 percent in the second quarter, after a 4.5 percent decline in the first three month of 2009.