Vauxhall – Ellesmere Port jobs safe

Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port Plant will have no job losses

It looks like the bulk of the savings that GM need to make in Vauxhall/Opel are going to fall outside the UK, with the news that there will be no job cuts at the Astra-making Ellesmere Port plant and around 340 job losses at Luton. Which is about as good as the news was ever likely to be for Vauxhall workers in the UK.

Whatever the outcome of the GM/Magna deal it always seemed likely that Ellesmere Port would be relatively unscathed. Production of the 2010 Vauxhall Astra is centred on the plant and looks set to be a sales success. Vauxhall are planning a move to a three shift system at Ellesmere Port for 2011 anyway as increase for the new Astra comes on stream, and any extra capacity will be used in the meantime to build the 2010 Astra Sports Tourer. All of which means no redundancies.

Luton also gets off relatively lightly, with around 300 redundancies planned. But the axe will fall on German plants with over 2000 jobs lost, Spain will lose almost 1000 jobs and it seems more than likely that the Opel plant in Antwerp will close completely with the loss of 2300 jobs.

Not perfect, but from a UK perspective relatively good news.

By Cars UK