Posted by Alex Bale
Friday, October 26, 2012
Ford had already announced this week that it was shutting down its plant in Genk, Belgium and moving production of the new Mondeo (above) to its factory in Valencia, Spain. Now comes word that that its Southampton plant in England, which builds the Transit, will also be closed.Ford is staring down the barrel of a €1-billion loss in Europe this year, and is expected to shed around 6,200 jobs across the continent. 4,300 of those went with the closure of Genk, and a further 1,400 have now been announced with the closure of Southampton and the closing of a panel stamping section of its vast facility at Dagenham, near London. Dagenham will stay on as a producer of diesel engines though, saving around 3,500 jobs.
Transit production will move to Ford's plant in Turkey as Ford seeks a return to European profitability by 2015.
Stephen Odell, CEO Ford of Europe said: "We have to act quickly and decisively to address the collapse in consumer demand in Europe today and position Ford for profitable growth tomorrow. We are reaffirming our commitment to the UK with a major investment in powertrain and engineering and one which will reinforce the UK’s central role in Ford’s global powertrain strategy"
Posted by Alex Bale
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Ford has confirmed today that it will be shuttering its factory in Genk, Belgium and transferring production of the new Mondeo to its Spanish factory in Valencia.The news will have come as a terrible blow to the 4,300 people Ford currently employs in Genk, building the Mondeo, S-Max and Galaxy. The all-new Mondeo, based on the US-market Ford Fusion, had been earmarked to be built in Genk, but when Ford delayed its European market introduction by 6 months, we smelled a rat. There were even rumours that production of the Mondeo would move to low-cost Mexico, but yesterday the announcement came that Genk was going and Valencia was getting the gig.That means that Genk will continue on its current four-day-week for a time yet, turning out the current Mondeo and S-Max & Galaxy, but will be progessively closed down as production of those models winds up. No word let on whether Valencia gets to build the next S-Max and Galaxy, but it's likely.The move comes as Ford seeks to both stem losses of €404-million this year in Europe, and against the background of a meltdown in European car sales that is seeing the long-standing problem of over-capacity in the industry (too many factories turning out too many cars for too few buyers) finally being tackled. Fiat has already closed a facotry in Sicily and may close another, PSA Peugeot Citroen has earmarked its Aulnay plant for closure and GM's Bochum plant in on the chopping block too.
