PSA Peugeot-Citroen says it has no plans to cut further jobs should a study into production capacity in France recommend more plant rationalisation, with the spotlight firmly on its Mulhouse and Poissy sites.
The automaker is currently engaged on a major headcount reduction with the closure of its Aulnay plant near Paris and up to 8,000 redundancies, but it appears yet further factory downsizing could be envisaged.
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Last month, PSA floated the idea production had to be “optimised” if it fell below 250,000 units, with Mulhouse in Eastern France appearing to come under scrutiny as it manufactured 224,000 units last year.
It now appears the Poissy plant producing C3, 208 and DS3 models, could also be evaluated with Mulhouse, with both plants seeing assembly lines possibly reduced to one instead of two.
“We have a study under way for the factories of Poissy and Mulhouse – this about industrial optimisation to see if this…could be interesting to pass these sites in monolines [one line],” a PSA spokeswoman told just-auto from Paris.
“So we would have one line of production in each site instead of two at the moment. For the moment there is no reduction in staff. We have no dates at all when this [study] will be finalised.
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By GlobalData“We have had a signature of a social contract with several unions, signed on 24 October. In the case of the social contract, the union [s] and the group have defined an objective of productivity in Europe.”
The PSA spokeswoman added the automaker was looking to 100% utilisation of its factories instead of the current 73% across Europe and 64% in France.
PSA has also undertaken to produce 1m vehicles by 2016 with no plant closures, as well as invest EUR1.6bn (US$2.2bn) during the period.
