There are plenty of financial problems around at the moment, but the one taxing General Motors Europe’s Vauxhall brand in the UK right now is the fall of the British pound against the euro.
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It is making manufacturing at the company’s Ellesmere Port plant very expensive and it’s a headache for parent company General Motors’ chief financial officer Fritz Henderson.
“It’s something we have to live with but we have made a commitment to manufacturing in the UK and right now the depreciation of the pound is hurting us,” he said in Paris today.
Most of the suppliers to the Ellesmere Port factory are based in Europe and buying from them in euros is costing a lot more than it did a year ago when the pound was worth EUR1.40 – it’s currently down to around EUR1.20.
Henderson added: “There is now a significance imbalance in the pound/euro and I would say that’s our biggest single challenge in the UK. We adjusted the prices of our cars but in these financially difficult times there is only so far you can go with that.”
He said there was no immediate threat to production, however.
