Finnish elevator company Kone has launched a program to support profitable growth, which will result in reducing about 1,000 employees worldwide, the company said on Tuesday.

The program is aimed to accelerate the execution of its Winning with Customers strategy to support profitable growth, issued at the beginning of 2017, announced Kone in a press release.

The target of the program is to generate cost savings of about 100 million euros annually, and will cause approximately 1,000 redundancies globally over the next three years until 2020.

Founded in 1910 and headquartered in Espoo, southern Finland, Kone is the fourth largest manufacturer of elevators and escalators in the world. Currently, the company employs some 52,000 personnel worldwide.

Since 2016, Kone’s net sales and operating profit has shown a downward trend, as orders received in the Asia-Pacific region decreased due to a decline in its significant Chinese market.