As General Motors formulates a business plan for its Opel/Vauxhall operations in Europe, the announcement that its Antwerp plant is to be closed comes as no surprise to many in the industry.
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Even before the onset of the current demand and capacity crisis that has hit Europe’s car manufacturing industry generally, Opel’s Antwerp plant appeared to have lost favour inside GM and had seen capacity reductions that made its long-term future questionable.
Antwerp makes the last generation Astra model which is now being replaced, but it lost out in the internal GM Europe competition to be awarded the latest Astra model, which is now going on sale across the region.
Analysts at JD Power Automotive Forecasting point out that Antwerp made fewer than 90,000 cars in 2009 but has the capacity to make 240,000 cars a year.
“A plant capacity utilisation rate of 36% is one of the worst rates in Europe,” says JD Power analyst Arthur Maher.
The plant once had an annual build capacity of 380,000 units, but was cut back under GM Europe’s ‘Project Olympia’ cost reduction programme to 240,000. There were plans for a further capacity reduction to 150,000 units a year.
Maher says the plant looked vulnerable pre-crisis.
“With the trimming of the plant’s capacity, long-term viability was clearly emerging as an issue. The plant is still making the outgoing Astra because that is still selling in some European markets, but that’s a phase-out situation and new product for Antwerp was apparently difficult to find.”
He estimates that taking Antwerp out of Opel/Vauxhall’s production network will improve its overall rate of capacity utilisation by around five percentage points.
“This is an important step for GM in Europe,” he says.
“This measure, combined with a projected recovery in production volume could lift Opel/Vauxhall capacity utilisation towards 70% in 2011, compared with an estimated 53% for GM Europe in 2009.”
The big question now: where else might the axe fall?
Dave Leggett
See also: GM confirms Antwerp Opel plant axe
