Dubai – Masaader News
As the clock ticks down on Britain’s departure from the EU with no deal in sight, the country’s car industry is braced for its biggest blow in more than a decade with the closure of a major automobile plant.
The decision by Honda to shut its Swindon factory by 2022, expected to be confirmed as early as Tuesday, throws into doubt 3,500 direct jobs, at a site responsible for about one in every 10 cars made in the UK last year. Thousands more jobs are at risk in the supply chain and associated businesses, according to Financial Times.
It will be the first closure of a car factory since Peugeot pulled down the shutters on its facility near Coventry in 2007 and the collapse of Rover two years before.
It is the latest bad news in a sector considered a beacon of British manufacturing, which was until recently enjoying a renaissance.
Industry groups are stepping up warnings to ministers over the failure to agree a deal with the EU. Dame Judith Hackitt, chair of the EEF manufacturers’ organisation, is set to warn on Tuesday that a no deal Brexit “is not a prospect our sector can counter”.
“The clock has almost run down and it is now essential that the pantomime in parliament ends,” she will say at an event attended by Philip Hammond, the UK chancellor, and Greg Clark, business secretary.
For the car industry, Brexit is another burden as falling demand for diesel engines in the wake of the VW emissions scandal and flagging consumer confidence have weighed on sales and triggered job cuts.
At the same time, carmakers have been vocal with warnings about the disruptive effects of a “hard” divorce from the bloc, because their extensive supply chains rely on frictionless trade to deliver parts and components.
The country’s largest carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover said it would have to find 4,500 redundancies last month, with most in Britain.
Nissan then reversed its post-referendum decision to build the X-Trail vehicle at its Sunderland plant in part because of the decline in diesel sales across Europe.