As a colleague ‘Skyped’ first thing this morning: “What an incredible week for news – rarely known anything like it!” 

Said colleague is Simon Warburton who has spent much of this week talking to supplier head offices world wide, and the few government officials who would pick up a phone, let alone speak on the record, to bring you as much as we can on the rapid spread and (changing hourly) consequences of this new coronavirus which looks like being this decade’s SARS.

As I write,  a chartered Wamos Air 747 has just crossed the Scottish coast, bringing 200 or so expatriate Britons back home from Wuhan to quarantine at the RAF base at Brize Norton – about 40 miles, as the Boeing flies, from my keyboard. It’s serious folks, as the hourly news updates show. I have seen US news video of another 747, a Kalitta freighter into which rows of spare airliner seats had hastily been installed, ferrying Americans home from China to temporary quarantine on a US base in California. Word is, colleague Simon says, remaining expats still stranded in Wuhan now have no way of getting to the airport as transport has been shut down, leaving an eerily empty city devoid of people and traffic on its streets. Grim.

As we reported:

• Magna joined the growing list of suppliers and OEMs which had banned travel to China as the coronavirus crisis spread across the world. China is home to numerous OEMs and suppliers, many concentrated around the city of Wuhan, whose 11m inhabitants are now in lock-down as Beijing attempts to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which has [as of 31 January 14:30GMT] claimed 213 lives. “We have more than 20,000 employees in China and 54 sites,” a Magna spokesman told just-auto. “We did expand the New Year holiday until 9 February. “Yes, we have [a] China travel ban implemented until further notice [as well as] issuing employee health screenings and workplace hygiene measures at our China facilities. And we [are] shipping extra medical supplies to our Chinese operations.”

• Bosch has cancelled or postponed all travel to and from China until the end of February as the UK today (31 January) confirmed the first coronavirus cases have reached the western end of Europe. England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty announced the first two coronavirus cases in the country, following last night’s declaration by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of a public health emergency of international concern. The German supplier has now shut down all its plants in China as the number of fatalities from the outbreak reached 231 as of midnight, 30 January, with 4,812 new cases also reported on the same day according to state run agency reports published by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China.

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• PSA, which has JVs in the Wuhan area and wider province, said it would apply any extension to the current Lunar New Year holiday in China if asked, as uncertainty continued to swirl around repatriation plans for western multinationals out of the country in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, which had (as of Thursday 30 January) claimed 170 lives.
• Companies in China were reviewing their operational plans as the coronavirus health crisis continued to deepen. Ford and Renault had already said they would keep plants shut until 10 February, a week beyond the end of the Chinese new year holidays.
• Plastic Omnium said it normally would re-open its Wuhan sites next week after the new year holiday but the situation on Wednesday remained fluid as the coronavirus crisis continued to spread around the world. The supplier has two production factories in the Wuhan area, manufacturing bodywork pieces and fuel systems, as well as an R&D centre, but it was unclear whether or not its four expatriate staff would be on board a French government repatriation flight thought to depart from the Chinese city that evening (29 January). Several French manufacturers, including the aforementioned PSA and Renault, plus Faurecia, Valeo and Plastic Omnium, operate in the Wuhan region with the city’s millions of citizens on effective lock down while Chinese authorities mull whether or not to extend the Lunar New Year holiday beyond an already increased date of 2 February.
• German roof systems supplier Webasto was particularly hard-hit and not only in China. On Tuesday it said four employees had contracted the coronavirus and it would close its Stockdorf headquarters in Bavaria until 2 February. The supplier had initially confirmed two coronavirus cases but this doubled with the manufacturer also announcing the news to its workforce late on that day (28 February). “We have currently notice of three further employees who tested positive and at the moment we are investigating the colleagues who were in contact with them,” Webasto Group CEO Holger Engelmann said. As with the employee whose infection was announced a day earlier, the three other colleagues work at the company’s headquarters in Stockdorf (the Starnberg district close to Munich). The company was remaining in close contact with authorities and was following recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute. By Monday, Webasto had already cancelled all business trips to and from China for at least the next two weeks and employees at the Stockdorf location were offered the possibility of working at home this week.
• In contrast, France’s Valeo, also as of Tuesday (28 January) told us it had not so far suffered any operational impact from the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan although it was continuing to follow the situation closely while shut for Chinese New Year. The supplier has three sites in the Wuhan area, two involved in the production of lighting and thermal systems as well as one R&D centre. “For the moment there is no operational impact for Valeo linked to the quarantine in Wuhan,” a Valeo spokeswoman in Paris told just-auto. “There are three Valeo sites there and they are all closed until the end of January – it is a programmed closure for Chinese New Year. The group is following very closely the situation to anticipate necessary measures for the protection of staff and operational continuity of the site.” Valeo has 1,900 staff at its China sites but said only a handful were French citizens.

France seemed to be particularly well organised when it came to getting its expats out of China this week. As the coronavirus spread, the government organised a flight for French nationals mid week directly out of Wuhan to Paris with passengers being isolated for two weeks on arrival to monitor any signs of the coronavirus being present. At that point, three cases of coronavirus had been recorded in France, two in Paris and one in Bordeaux. We have literally, just this minute (13:03GMT), confirmed with French military sources an A340 evacuation flight had landed safely back at Istres air force base in France.

The other big event this week, at least for us here in the UK, is Brexit – we officially leave the European Union at 23:00GMT tonight, having been accepted after several rejections (led notably by then French president Charles de Gaulle) into the then EEC trading bloc fully way back in 1973, and are now entering an 11-month ‘transition period’. What are the implications for the automotive industry? Our Dave Leggett provided the big picture this week: although the UK is formally outside of the EU from tomorrow, much will be unchanged under that transition period that lasts until the end of 2020. Rightfully so, citizens of the UK and EU (many east Europeans have come to work in the UK auto industry) can, for now, continue to move between the two territories freely as if the UK was still in the EU. Similarly, traded goods can be shipped unhindered – no additional tariffs or checks at the border. That is obviously good news for the automotive sector, with its elongated and complex pan-European supply chains. It’s business as usual for all those UK-EU shipments in both directions, components and finished vehicles.

The transition period was designed to give a bit of breathing space for businesses and avoid the so-called ‘cliff-edge’ to new standards and arrangements that could be very disruptive. But it is far from the end of the story. The two sides – UK government on one side, EU27 on the other, represented by the European Commission’s negotiating team – are supposed to use this year of transition to hammer out a comprehensive agreement for a permanent relationship between the UK and EU. This would embrace all aspects of relations between the UK and EU – citizens’ rights, movement of people, security cooperation, trade arrangements, fisheries, financial services and so on. It is quite a long list and the general idea is that everything should be in place for 1 January 2021. Will it be straightforward to get that comprehensive agreement signed off and ready to go before the year is out? Pull up a coffee and enjoy the rest of Dave’s well informed take on that.

Have a nice weekend.

Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com