MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Renault reviewing production costs in France and bid decisions in the pipeline
CEO Carlos Ghosn the car maker could disappear “in its current form” French car maker Renault is considering the complete closure of factories because of the dire state of the European automobile market, the company's chief operating officer was quoted on Sunday.
“We will see. We are currently talking to the unions and explaining to them how big the gaps are in our competitiveness,” Carlos Tavares told German trade newspaper Automobilwoche.
“We have a competitiveness problem in western Europe and France.”
The European market's prolonged decline is even starting to make previously impervious car makers, such as Volkswagen, feel vulnerable. “We're bracing for more negative surprises in 2013, perhaps also in 2014,” Christian Klingler, VW's sales chief, said at the Paris auto show last week.
Tavares pointed out that Renault's cooperation with Nissan had given the company hard data on productivity levels at Nissan factories in Sunderland in Britain and Barcelona in Spain.
“These factories are really top,” the Renault CEO said, adding that discussions were under way on whether Nissan could make production capacity available to Renault.
“That is one possibility,” Tavares said.
A Renault spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, but Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said on Friday that the French car maker could disappear “in its current form” if it is unable to be competitive in its home market.
However, Ghosn also said that Renault had no plans at this stage to cut jobs in France.
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Read all commentsAusterity isn't working
Oct 01st, 2012 - 09:11 am 0“We have a competitiveness problem in western Europe and France.”
Oct 01st, 2012 - 01:31 pm 0Yes, it is called a 30 hour week and 6 weeks of holiday.
BK you can repeat your mantra over and over and nothing will change. Countries in Europe can change their government from left to right and back again and nothing will change. Even the socialist governments know the facts. They use your “austerity isn’t working” line to attack the incumbent government, but once in power they know the reality is that to increase spending would be to accelerate decline.
Look at France. The socialist gov’t hasn’t increased spending because they know they can’t. The only route left to them is to increase taxes to disincentivising levels.
The UK left have said the same, they would maintain conservative public spending cuts.
Renault are obviously softening up the unions before renegotiations. What they need to do is take them to South Korea to see why they are being so successful at exporting cars. Putting aside innovation and technology, it is hard work and less pay. Everyone would like to work fewer hours and earn more, it might win votes, but it isn’t realistic.
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Meanwhile in Chile public spending increase 127% in 6 years.
The draconian work rules in France are driving away all the jobs. France needs a massive round of deregulation.
Oct 01st, 2012 - 01:34 pm 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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