Optimism for the continuity of the Ford Almussafes plant after the assembly of staff with administration | News from the Valencian Community | EUROtoday

The essential assembly held this Wednesday in Dunton (England) between Ford's world and European administration and the European unions has concluded “in a positive and constructive manner,” based on a press release from UGT, the bulk union on the Almussafes plant. Sources near the negotiation are optimistic concerning the ensures given by the administration of the multinational to the employees in regards to the continuity of the Valencian manufacturing facility, which is able to cease producing the Transit Connect van on April 17. The Kuga SUV will then be the one automobile to be assembled on the manufacturing facility, which has a workforce of round 4,800 staff.

However, the union factors out that this Thursday a press release from the European Works Council might be made public, through which extra data might be given in regards to the assembly that lasted practically 4 hours. In this sense, the president of the works council of the Ford plant in Almussafes, Carlos Faubel (UGT), has reiterated to EFE that the assembly has been “constructive”, it has proceeded “on positive lines”, however he has insisted that A dedication has been made to report on the assembly tomorrow.

The assembly came about in Dunton, the place Ford has an engine plant and a analysis heart, and, based on Ford Spain sources, was inner. As reported by UGT, the president of Ford, Jim Farley, the director of Operations, Kumar Galhotra, and representatives of the European administration, and on the union facet, the president of the European Works Council and its vp and the president of the Ford committee in Almussafes, Carlos Faubel.

The UGT union had pinned its hopes that this assembly would finalize selections on the state of affairs of the Almussafes manufacturing facility, which as of April 17 might be left with a single mannequin in manufacturing, to outline the plant's workload. within the coming months and within the years to come back in its introduced and subsequently frozen transition in the direction of electrification.

For Faubel, the answer could be to fee the Spanish plant to provide some mannequin, most likely hybrid, and with it assure the workload till the electrification introduced by the multinational for this manufacturing facility.

Currently, the Almussafes manufacturing facility has an ERTE underway that can finish, after its latest enlargement, on April 19. This extension of the ERTE of 9 working days will cowl the shortage of provide from suppliers and the launch section of the hybrid Kuga, which won’t but be in its last stage, and can have an effect on a mean of 640 folks per day, with a cap of 700.

The ERTE, which started to be utilized on February 13 and initially lined till March 28, will have an effect on the automobile plant – which is able to cease the manufacturing shift within the afternoons every single day – and the engine plant – which provides 5 days-.

In latest years the manufacturing facility has misplaced jobs on account of layoff processes which have left the workforce at round 4,800 staff and has utilized successive ERTE that started with the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and have been renewed on account of issues in provides or lack of elements, and workers because of the drop in manufacturing, to which is added the uncertainty because of the transition to electrical automobiles.

The Valencian manufacturing facility has gone from producing nearly 370,000 vehicles in 2018 of 5 totally different fashions, to manufacturing just below 212,000 final 12 months, which represents a drop of 42%. In between, the manufacturing facility, along with the approaching lack of the van, stopped making the Mondeo, the S-Max and the Galaxy, in a context through which every thing occurred within the automotive world: a pandemic that paralyzed manufacturing of factories, a chip disaster that generated a significant bottleneck and wars that additionally affected provide chains. All this whereas the sector accelerated its transition to electrical vehicles and Ford assigned electrical fashions to its European vegetation, at all times leaving Almussafes out.

In 2021, the corporate started an extended course of through which the model put Almussafes in competitors with the German plant in Saarlouis to see which manufacturing facility supplied higher productiveness and value situations to make a brand new technology of electrical vehicles. For this purpose, UGT agreed with Ford in February 2022 to freeze salaries and enhance working hours to persuade the corporate's administration, which lastly selected the manufacturing facility as “the preferred factory to assemble vehicles based on an architecture of next-generation electric cars.”

However, the sector's expectations for electrical market progress should not being met and electrification plans have been delayed to the purpose that Ford “frozen” them in Europe on the finish of final 12 months. This state of affairs set off all of the alarms in regards to the continuity of the Valencian manufacturing facility, even having been chosen over the German one.

Financial forecasts

On the opposite hand, the automotive group has confirmed its monetary forecasts for the present 12 months, through which it expects to attain an adjusted working revenue of between 9,241 and 11,089 million euros. This has been highlighted by Ford's chief monetary officer, John Lawler, who has ratified the operational steerage offered by the group originally of February, pointing to an adjusted free money move of 5,544 million and 6,469 million euros, in addition to capital expenditures. between 7,393 million and eight,779 million euros.