Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question is from the line of Rick Skidmore with Goldman Sachs.
Rick Skidmore - Goldman Sachs
Can you just talk about how you see the capacity shuts unfolding and specifically your fixed cost reduction efforts unfolding as you move through the year?
Al Stroucken
I think as far as permanent shutdowns is concerned, I assume that's what you're referring to, we had said at the beginning of this year that we expect the benefit of about $100 million in the course of this year. I'd say the comparison against previous year is most probably going to be more favorable in the first half of the year as we will be lapping some of the closure activities that we had in the second half of last year.
Rick Skidmore - Goldman Sachs
Just following up on that, looking at specifically North America, and as you approach the two big contracts that you have coming up, do you anticipate anything happening in North America or is the focus on capacity closures primarily going to be Europe?
Al Stroucken
I want to make very clear that what we are doing with regard to permanent adjustments is really adjusting our global footprint independent of the present economic conditions and also independent of what we may or may not expect is going to happen with one or other customers. So all the things that we have put in place at this point in time, we are starting from the assumption that we have too much installed assets that we did not need and this is the correction that we are presently going through, so it's quite independent of what is presently occurring in the marketplace.
Operator
And your next question is from the line of Claudia Hueston with JPMorgan.
Claudia Hueston - JPMorgan
Can you just provide a little bit more color on the confidence you have that volumes have bottomed, maybe a little bit of clarity on just how demand is trending now. Are there differences by regions? Are there some places that have picked up more than others? And then just if you have any expectation for volume as a whole for 2009 that you'd like to share, that would be helpful.
Al Stroucken
As I said at the last conference call, visibility is very limited, it's quite murky out there and I have to tell you even after the first quarter, it's still pretty murky out there. But let me try to at least contextually give you some indications. If we look at the first quarter and what we typically saw or what we saw last year was between January and March there was a ramp-up of about 4% of volume in March compared to January. This year that's a difference of 20%, so it really shows you how deep the trough was and what the correction has been.
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