Ford announces Bridgend plant closure
Ford engine manufacturing in Wales to cease in 2020
Ford has announced plans to close its Bridgend engine plant in autumn next year, with the loss of 1,700 jobs. The news comes as a further blow to the UK automotive industry, following Nissan and Honda's similar decisions in Sunderland and Swindon respectively.
Ford of Europe president, Stuart Rowley, said of the closure: "Creating a strong and sustainable Ford business in Europe requires us to make some difficult decisions, including the need to scale our global engine manufacturing footprint to best serve our future vehicle portfolio. We are committed to the UK. However, changing customer demand and cost disadvantages, plus an absence of additional engine models for Bridgend going forward make the plant economically unsustainable in the years ahead."
The factory's presence in the area has been a vital source of employment and revenue for locals for decades, contributing £3.3 billion to the economy in the past 10 years alone. That's despite the site operating well below capacity for a considerable period, with the planned manufacturing of Ford's Dragon engines cut to 125,000 a year in 2016, just a sixth of the plant's 750,000-unit capability.
With JLR's struggles also impacting on a workforce split evenly between producing engines for that company and Ford, the writing has looked to be on the wall for a little while now, but the news will come as a devastating blow for employees and the wider area nonetheless.
TX.
Edit - 1700 job losses vs record employment
TX.
Edit - 1700 job losses vs record employment
So sure, you're probably right. Ford is closing one of it's petrol engine production facilities because of a decline in diesel sales.
This has been on the cards for years.
Ford is a US/German company and all the pressure is to do work in either those countries or ship out to cheap resources where they've had a lot of encouragement (ie cash) to set up, eg turkey.
The UK Ford facilities have been doomed for years.
Says the guy driving a Skoda Octavia, which presumably has been made entirely from British built components?
At the moment it doesn't make any sense to plan to manufacture anything in the UK that will be sent to Europe or anywhere else.
It does make a lot of sense (if you have too much capacity so something has to give), to shut a plant in the UK and keep the one in Europe.
Ford didn't create this situation, I'm not sure why you'd direct your ire at them.
This is a situation caused by falling demand for new vehicles, as everybody waits to see if electric ones really become practical for everything. Existing cars not requiring replacement, and to cap it off, a cloudy looking economic future for the UK. Ford didn't create any of these factors.
In any case the exchange rate since 2016 has meant that exporting is cheaper even with tariffs than previously.
The main problem is that the automotive sector is going through massive change with diesel problems, electric cars, plus slowdown in car buying generally. JLR hurt by slowdown in China.
Before the inevitable task forces and politicians sabre rattling about the perceived unfairness of it all perhaps the UK and Welsh Government should stop and consider that there are some very obvious downsides to the very policies they, on other days, are so keen to push so hard.
For what its worth I think the electric revolution is here to stay and is probably a good thing in the long term. But it doesn't come without pain somewhere and this week that somewhere is Bridgend.
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