Bentley’s Push To Become Profitable Threatened By No-Deal Brexit

With the VW Group’s main shareholders want Bentley to get out of the red and become profitable as soon as possible, the British automaker might have a hard time meeting their demands under a no-deal Brexit.

According to CEO Adrian Hallmark, who put the British automaker back on track to stop its losses, the chances of Britain leaving the EU on March 29 with a deal are “fairly low,” reports Automotive News Europe.

“It’s Brexit that’s the killer”, he said. “If we ended up with a hard Brexit… that would hit us this year because we do have a potential to get beyond break-even to do the turnaround. It would put at fundamental risk our chance of becoming profitable.”

The strong possibility of a no-deal Brexit has forced Bentley to take measures such as building up stocks of imported parts to 10 days rather than two, as well as building a higher proportion of cars for certain non-European markets in the months to follow.

“We will build more cars for China or the U.S. than we would normally do in the six-month period,” added Hallmark. When asked whether the automaker would move some of its production out of Britain, he stated that such drastic measures won’t happen in the medium term.

“You can never say never, but there’s no intention of moving what we have to other facilities because of Brexit. When we look at new products, are they under question? Of course, they are like every product that is in there was under question… We have to be competitive and we are.”