Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant will see 400 jobs cut as the British marque’s new owner, PSA Group, moves production of the Vauxhall Astra from two shifts to one early in 2018.
The announcement from PSA, which acquired Vauxhall and its European counterpart Opel from GM for £1.9bn in August 2017, comes as a result of “challenging European market conditions” according to a PSA spokesman.
The Group, which also owns Peugeot, Citroen and DS, also said that manufacturing costs at Ellesmere Port were higher that at other major plants in the group, putting it in line for the job cuts.
Vauxhall employs 4,500 people in the UK as a whole and 1,800 at the Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire. It is hoped that the majority of the 400 job loses will be voluntary.
Vauxhall itself has been quick to point out that the move to scale back Astra production has nothing to do with uncertainty around Brexit. Vauxhall Astra sales have declined along with those of other traditional C-segment family hatchbacks as the market has moved towards crossovers and SUVs. With a new Astra due in the early 2020s, Vauxhall claims that the move is intended to make the plant as efficient as possible in a bid to be chosen to build that car.
The PSA statement said that no decision on where the new Vauxhall Astra will be build would be taken until the uncertainty around the UK’s exit from the European Union had cleared. Stating that once PSA had “enough visibility on the future trading relationship with the EU, and the plant competitiveness has been addressed, the company will be in a position to consider future investments."
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