Two years after it faced closure, PSA Peugeot Citroën’s Villaverde assembly plant in Spain can look towards the future with more confidence. That’s because Citroën started production of the C4 Cactus crossover there at the end of April, with the plant to concentrate solely on this model starting next year.
Located in Madrid, the facility used to manufacture the Peugeot 207 hatchback and its variants, but when the 207 was replaced by the 208 in 2012, it lost production to France and Slovakia. Two years ago, the plant had 2,700 workers, now it employs 1,600 people, 200 of whom were hired this year to support the start of C4 Cactus production.
Citroën wants to reach a production target of 380 units a day in July, which means the plant will build nearly 85,000 vehicles a year, assuming 220 production days a year. That would be less than half of the plant’s annual installed capacity of 200,000 units.
However, production targets depend on the way the C4 Cactus will be received by the market. Order books for the crossover have just opened in European markets like France and Italy. “Now we are working to provide European dealers with cars, then we will work on customers’ orders,” plant director Jose Carlos Robredo Bertol told AutoNews Europe.
The executive added that the plant could adapt quickly to the demands of the marketplace, explaining that it would take three months to add a third shift. Furthermore, a fourth shift could be added during weekends.
By Dan Mihalascu
PHOTO GALLERY
