Ellesmere Port is a small, quiet market town in the North West of England, south of Liverpool. Since 1962, it breathes the automobile, with the establishment of the Vauxhall factory, a typically British brand, owned by Opel, then PSA and therefore now the Stellantis group, born in January from the merger of PSA with Fiat Chrysler. The Ellesmere Port factory employs 1,000 people directly and employs nearly 7,000 people in the surrounding area.
The fog that envelops the city on Wednesday, March 3, also obscures the future of the last industrial site of Vauxhall. Will it be lifted during the presentation of Stellantis results this same Wednesday? Nothing is less sure. The standoff has been going on for years between Carlos Tavares, the boss of PSA and now Stellantis, and the British government. Pending a Brexit deal, investments have been frozen.
An agreement has been reached between the European Union and the United Kingdom, but another element has come to complicate the matter. In November 2020, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented a very ambitious plan to fight global warming. And among its measures is the ban on the sale of vehicles with combustion engines from 2030, when most European countries have set this date around 2040.
Sebile tense
From then on, Carlos Tavares set his conditions. Either the government subsidizes the conversion of the Ellesmere Port site to produce electric cars, or it closes it. He who promised that his plan to save 5 billion euros, resulting from the merger, would not go through plant closures, would make an exception for England. Behind this battle on the English coasts hides a considerable stake for the government of His Majesty, that of maintaining one of its last industrial bases.
Faced with the collapse of its national industry in the 1980s, the country chose to become the aircraft carrier for Japanese automobile production destined for Europe. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have established themselves en masse. Nissan’s Sunderland plant is the largest in Europe. This industry is almost 80% export oriented, mainly in Europe. However, Brexit threatens to destroy this architecture. Ford has left the island, Honda will do so this year and Toyota is wondering. To stay, despite the European divorce and the accelerated ultimatum towards the electric conversion, the manufacturers are all holding out the bowl.
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