© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Signage is seen outdoors the Ford Halewood transmissions plant in Liverpool, Britain, December 1, 2022. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photograph
By Victoria Waldersee and Christina Amann
BERLIN (Reuters) -Ford will determine by mid-February what number of jobs to chop in Europe, a German union mentioned on Tuesday, as stories surfaced that BYD and automotive contract producer Magna had been interested by shopping for one of many U.S. carmaker’s German websites.
The way forward for the location in Saarlouis, Germany has been unclear since final June when Ford picked a web site in Spain to assemble its next-generation electrical car (EV) over the German plant, which can cease producing its present mannequin, the Ford Focus, from 2025.
Amongst fifteen attainable buyers had been firms in power and automotive meeting in addition to unique gear producers, the works council chief of the Saarlouis web site, Markus Thal, instructed Reuters.
The Wall Road Journal reported on Tuesday that Ford officers had been travelling to China subsequent week to go to BYD and talk about promoting the location to the Chinese language EV maker, citing sources conversant in the matter.
Autos publication Automobilwoche reported that Magna and VDL Nedcar had been additionally among the many fifteen buyers.
“We’re in ongoing discussions with quite a lot of potential consumers and don’t have anything additional so as to add presently,” a Ford spokesperson mentioned, declining to touch upon the person firms named.
Spokespeople for BYD and Magna declined to remark. VDL Nedcar couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.
“It’s of secondary significance which continent a attainable investor comes from – if a carmaker comes, that is what we want to see, as a result of it is what we do,” Thal mentioned.
He added that negotiations with attainable buyers had accelerated in latest months and the carmaker aimed to current an answer for the way forward for the plant by the tip of the primary quarter.
“We want a plan urgently,” he added, saying employees wouldn’t wait till 2024 for an answer.
BYD instructed Reuters in October it was seeking to produce electrical automobiles in Europe, the place it presently solely makes electrical buses at a plant in Hungary.
It sells three Chinese language-made automobiles in a handful of European markets and mentioned final November it plans so as to add extra fashions and markets this 12 months, one among quite a few Chinese language manufacturers concentrating on Europe’s rising EV market.
Individually, union representatives for Ford’s largest German web site in Cologne will meet on Saturday to debate deliberate job cuts which the works council knowledgeable employees of in conferences on Monday.
Administration figures had been invited to current their plans to the workforce however didn’t present any particulars, in keeping with the works council.
The worst-case state of affairs was as much as 2,500 job cuts in product growth and an additional 700 in administration, a union spokesperson mentioned. A second state of affairs was additionally on the desk, they added, declining to supply particulars.
A Ford spokesperson declined to touch upon the deliberate cuts, referring to a Jan. 20 assertion through which it mentioned that the shift to EV manufacturing requires structural adjustments and it could not say extra till plans are finalised.
The carmaker has dedicated to an all-electric lineup in Europe by 2030 and its U.S. management has repeatedly flagged that EVs require much less labour.
Its European workers final noticed a wave of job cuts in 2019 and 2020 because the carmaker pursued a 6% working margin within the area, a purpose thrown astray by the coronavirus pandemic, with pretax revenue margins in Europe within the first 9 months of 2022 at simply 2.2% of gross sales.
The employees council in Cologne has demanded that administration decide to no layoffs earlier than Dec. 31 of 2032, and that the roughly 2,500 product growth workers there stay a part of the automaker’s world growth panorama.
