The Japanese automaker will drastically cut production by March 2023. It announced Thursday that it will close its Barcelona plant, which employs 3,000 people.
The Spanish government deplored the closure of the Barcelona plant on Thursday. This is the first blow to Spanish industry against the backdrop of a pandemic.
AFP
Japanese manufacturer Nissan announced on Thursday that it intends to reduce its global production capacity by around 20% by the end of March 2023 from its level in late March 2019, notably by closing its Barcelona plant, which employs around 3,000 people. . The group plans to increase its annual production capacity, currently from 7.2 million units, to 5.4 million units per year in 2022/23.
The Spanish government deplored the closure of the Barcelona plant on Thursday. This is the first blow to Spanish industry against the backdrop of a pandemic. Spain is the second largest car maker in the European Union after Germany. The automotive sector represents a key sector for this country, corresponding to 10% of its GDP.
“The CEO of Nissan has communicated to the Minister of Industry the company’s plan not to continue operating at the Barcelona site,” said a spokesman for the Department of Industry. “We regret this decision by Nissan to leave not only Spain but Europe, a market of 700 million consumers, and to concentrate its activities in Asia, despite the enormous efforts made by the government to maintain activity of the company “, reacted the Minister for Foreign Affairs Arancha Gonzalez, on the national radio.
Paralyzed since the beginning of the month
Nissan has several production sites in Barcelona with a total of 3000 employees. All activity was paralyzed since the beginning of the month by a strike by part of the employees who demanded an investment plan for these sites where the reduction of 20% of the workforce was already planned.
Nissan, in alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi, announced during the summer its intention to cut 12,500 jobs until March 2023 worldwide, but the coronavirus crisis could bring this figure to 20,000, 15% of the workforce , according to the Japanese agency Kyodo News.
The Spanish foreign minister said that “all kinds of support, help and support had been offered” to Nissan, which preferred to “refocus its activities regardless of plans” for European support. “We are not going to throw in the towel,” added Arancha Gonzalez. “We are going to explore all the possibilities, because what concerns us is to keep the job,” she said, without ruling out the possibility of finding a buyer.
The Spanish Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, said that the government had “proposed to the company to launch a negotiation process to see how this process could be managed”. The government has claimed that, according to its information, the investments required to maintain the plant are “less than the estimated cost of the closure”, which it estimated at more than one billion euros.
((AFP / NXP)
Posted today at 11:04 a.m.-
