Nissan isn’t going to extend the contracts of 248 temporary workers at their UK factory in Sunderland, citing the current drop in demand.
The temporary workers come from various departments of the factory, which was shut down in mid-March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since then, the Japanese carmaker has resumed production at Sunderland but with only one of the lines running to build the Juke and Qashqai models. The plant’s second line, which builds the Qashqai and Leaf, is scheduled to reopen on June 22.
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“Given current business conditions in Europe, we are facing a period of reduced volumes in our Sunderland plant,” Nissan told Reuters in a statement. “Unfortunately, therefore, we will not be extending the contracts of 248 temporary manufacturing staff at the plant.”
Nissan’s Sunderland factory is the biggest car manufacturing plant in the country, with the company warning that the potential tariffs that would come from a no-deal Brexit would make the facility not viable.
Still, the automaker’s UK factory has emerged almost unscathed from the recently announced restructuring plan that saw factories in Spain and Indonesia being shut down completely, in addition to cutting a 20 percent off Nissan’s global model lineup and production capacity.
Nissan will instead focus on its core markets and products and that includes prioritizing Japan, China, and North America and expanding its presence in the EV segments that are forming in the market. In fact, the Japanese automaker wants electric and hybrid cars to account for 60 percent of its global sales by 2023.
