U.K. Monthly Car Production Falls on Weaker Europe, Asia Demand
Car output fell 11% from a year earlier to 108,239 units, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said.
(Bloomberg) --
U.K. car production fell in July for the 14th straight month as consumers and businesses in Europe and Asia bought fewer vehicles.
Car output fell 11% from a year earlier to 108,239 units, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said in a statement Thursday. Export production, which represents 8 out of every 10 cars built in Britain, fell 15%.
Carmakers have been scaling back operations in the U.K. on concerns that a no-deal split from the European Union would disrupt their operations. Honda Motor Co. is already shuttering a site in Swindon that employs 3,500 people, and Nissan Motor Co. no longer plans to build the X-Trail sport utility vehicle at the country’s biggest auto plant in Sunderland.
Read more about job losses in the global auto industry.
“Another month of decline for U.K. car manufacturing is a serious concern,” Mike Hawes, chief executive of SMMT, said in the statement. “With the U.K. market also weak, the importance of maintaining the U.K.’s global competitiveness has never been more important.”
Even so, output for the domestic market rose 10%, the group said.
Other carmakers have announced plans to scale back. Ford Motor Co. said in June that its Bridgend engine plant in Wales will be shuttered by September next year, though the move is part of a Europe-wide retrenchment. Jaguar Land Rover, Britain’s biggest automaker, is building the Jaguar I-Pace SUV, its first all-electric car, in Austria and shifting production of the Land Rover Discovery to Slovakia.
“We need a Brexit deal — and quickly — to unlock investment and safeguard the long term future of a sector which has recently been such an international success story,” Hawes said in the statement.
--With assistance from Siddharth Philip.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Reed Stevenson
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