Odelo Slovenija, the country’s automotive lighting supplier, announced an internal restructuring on 27 October 2026 that will remove between 117 and 127 jobs across its two manufacturing sites in Črešnjevci and Prebold. The company said the cuts — about 57 roles in Črešnjevci and some 60–70 in Prebold — are planned to take effect by 31 December 2026. The announcement appears in the European Restructuring Monitor factsheet published by Eurofound on 27 October 2026.
What the company announced
Eurofound’s factsheet records Odelo Slovenija’s declaration as an "internal restructuring" and gives the formal numbers: 117–127 planned job losses, announcement date 27 October 2026 and an employment-effect start date of 31 December 2026. The company’s statement in the ERM cites a sharp decline in orders from the automotive industry as the trigger for the action. Eurofound also notes that Odelo has tried to minimise redundancies by suspending student work and halting planned foreign-worker recruitment, and that trade unions have proposed internal redeployment and agreed departures.
Why orders fell
The Eurofound summary specifically links the shortfall in orders to poor sales at one of Odelo’s OEM customers: it records Audi sales in China as being 35–50% below expectations and identifies that slump as a material driver of the reduced volumes reaching Odelo’s Slovenian plants. The ERM factsheet provides the company-level detail used in this report.
What this means for the market
Odelo is a specialist supplier of lighting systems to the automotive industry; historically the group has served major German OEMs and international marques, so a cut of this size in Slovenia reverberates across local supply chains that depend on component work and related services. Industry reporting on Odelo’s role in Europe’s component network underlines the firm’s profile as a tier supplier to multiple OEMs, which helps explain why weaker volumes at one big customer can force headcount reductions at site level.
Immediate impacts will be concentrated in the local labour markets around Prebold and Črešnjevci: Eurofound’s factsheet gives a clear timetable (announcement 27 October 2026; employment effect start 31 December 2026) and the company is negotiating mitigations such as redeployment and voluntary departure schemes with unions. For the broader supplier community in Slovenia, the Odelo case is a reminder that shocks to a single OEM’s sales (in this case Audi in China) can quickly transmit to European supplier factories and their local workforces.
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Sources: Eurofound, Industry Europe
