Volkswagen has ruled out closing a plant in Brussels to save costs and will instead move to reduce staff with cuts spread across all its European manufacturing centres, a newspaper reported on Friday, according to Reuters.


The Financial Times Deutschland reportedly cited unidentified VW management sources as saying it would take eight to nine years to recover the costs of closing its plant in Brussels, which made such a step exorbitantly expensive.


Reuters noted that the Brussels plant has often been cited as a potential candidate for closure. Some 5,700 staff there made 185,000 vehicles last year, including VW Golf and Lupo models and the Audi A3, the paper said.


Volkswagen has already said it has several thousand excess staff in Europe, the report added.