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MOTOR
Jaguar Land Rover to set up Saudi plant
Luxury auto maker Jaguar Land Rover, owned by India’s Tata Motors,
said it was looking at setting up a plant in Saudi Arabia as it seeks to
tap into growing regional demand.
Britain-based JLR said it signed a letter of intent with a Saudi
government body to consider opening the plant but that no detailed
discussions had been held between the two sides.
“This is an exciting project that could enable Jaguar Land Rover to
establish a joint venture partnership in a part of the world where
luxury vehicle sales are expected to rise,” JLR chief executive Ralf
Speth said in a statement.
The announcement comes after JLR said last month it would construct a
plant with leading Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Co to make
vehicles at a new plant near Shanghai to tap surging Chinese demand for
luxury autos.
JLR and Saudi Arabia’s National Industrial Clusters Development
Program will now conduct “a detailed feasibility study together to
determine the viability of setting up an automotive facility,” JLR said.
Saudi Arabia “is an attractive potential development option,” Speth
said, adding JLR was committed to new international partnerships to meet
demand. The agreement “is clearly exploratory at this stage,” a JLR
spokesman told AFP.
But JLR said it has already identified opportunities in Saudi Arabia
in aluminium parts production.
The preliminary plans call for the JLR plant to be built next to the
world’s largest aluminium complex, a joint venture between Saudi Arabian
Mining Co and Alcoa of the United States, due to start production in
2014.
JLR’s expansion plans follow a sharp rise in sales to emerging
markets. In this calendar year, sales in the Middle East and North
Africa have increased by more than nine percent.
Tata Motors bought JLR from Ford in 2008 for $2.3 billion as part of
plans to expand beyond Asia and the company accounted for 63 percent of
the Indian firm’s revenues in the last financial year.
AFP
Opel to cease car production at Bochum plant in 2016
Opel, the loss-making German arm of US auto giant General Motors,
said on Monday it would halt auto production at its Bochum plant in 2016
but pledged to keep the site running as a parts distribution centre.
“Opel management has today informed the workforce that full vehicle
production at the Bochum plant will be discontinued after production of
the Zafira model is scheduled to cease in 2016,” the statement said.
Opel had already announced in June that it would stop building Zafira
cars in the western German city of Bochum in 2016.
“The main reasons behind this decision are the dramatic decline in
the European car market and the enormous overcapacity in the entire
industry,” Opel explained.
Despite “intensive efforts, we have been unable to change this
situation.” On Friday, the works committee had said the decision could
mean the entire site might be shut down with the potential loss of up to
3,000 jobs.
But management insisted that would not be the case and that although
vehicle production would cease, Bochum would be used as a parts
distribution centre after that date.
Indeed, in its new function, the plant could even be expanded as part
of an initiative to secure existing jobs at Bochum and even create new
ones. “It is our clear intention to safeguard the jobs of a significant
number of Opel employees in Bochum, said head of GM Europe Steve Girsky.
“Germany is our most important market and, with around 20,000
employees, the backbone and home of our brand. That will remain true in
the future,” said Opel deputy chief Thomas Sedran. According to the
German news agency DPA, “several hundred” jobs would be created in the
new parts distribution centre, but a company spokesman declined to
confirm the figure. “Everything is still being negotiated,” he told AFP.
GM estimates that it stands to lose more than $1.5 billion (1.2
billion euros) on its European operations this year and wants to steer
Opel and its British sister brand Vauxhall back to profit by 2015. Opel
and Vauxhall are heavily dependent on the European market where
industry-wide sales fell by 15 percent in the first nine months of the
year, according to data published by the European automobile makers’
association.
But Opel’s main works committee laid the blame for the carmaker’s
troubles at management’s door. “The current situation -- which
management is using to justify the closure of vehicle production in
Bochum -- is the result of decades of management mistakes and a lack of
continuity in company policy,” said works committee chief Wolfgang
Schaefer-Klug. He urged management to participate in talks to offer a
firm commitment to all of Opel’s German manufacturing facilities.
“If that doesn’t happen, there will be no compromises on the
employees’ side,” Schaefer-Klug said. Opel employs 37,400 people in
Europe, including 20,300 at four sites in Germany, in Ruesselsheim,
Bochum, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern.
The German government expressed “great regret” at Opel’s decision to
halt vehicle production at Bochum. “That’s a terrible blow for the
people affected and their families, as well as for Bochum as an
industrial site,” said government spokesman Georg Streiter.
AFP
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(FILES)The Honda Accord Crosstown is
on display during the the second press preview day at the
2010 North American International Auto Show in this January
12, 2010 file photo at Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan.
Hondas exports from its US plants reached a million vehicles
on December 5, 2012 as the Japanese automaker works to
become a net exporters of automobiles from North America
within the next two years. The one millionth vehicle -- a
silver 2013 Honda Accord EX-L sedan -- rolled off the line
at the automakers plant in Marysville, California and will
be shipped to South Korea. The milestone comes 30 years
after Honda became the first Japanese automaker to build a
manufacturing plant in the United States. AFP |
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