Opel has announced plans to shut down its Antwerp facility in Belgium, with the loss of 2300 jobs.
The move is part of a savage European cost-cutting plan at General Motors that will eventually involve more than 8000 redundancies.
With the European car market expected to be just 1.5 million units in 2010 - down form a peak of 4 million in 2007 - Opel says that it needs to reduce its capacity by 20 per cent to ensure long-term sustainability.
The UK's Ellesmere Port Vauxhall plant is safe for now, but GM Europe says that all Opel/Vauxhall production sites will be affected in some way, either through redundancies, capacity reduction or general cost-cutting.
"We fully understand the effect this announcement has on the Antwerp employees and their families and we sympathise with them," says Opel CEO Nick Reilly. "Many have been dedicated to the plant over generations and have done an excellent job producing great quality cars. The decision to announce this today was not taken lightly; instead, it is the unfortunate result of the current business reality."
GM, meanwhile, is still trying to decide what to do with Saab - sell it to Spyker, investment firm Genii Capital, or wind down the Swedish luxury car maker completely. A decision, says GM, is expected 'very soon'.
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