PSA chief Carlos Tavares is looking for large and ‘speedy’ cost savings following the planned acquisition of Opel/Vauxhall, reports say.

Tavares has had a telephone call this week with UK prime minister Theresa May in which she is said to have stressed her government’s commitment to the UK auto industry and the two Vauxhall plants.

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Tavares is due to meet with the UK business secretary, Greg Clark, and Len McCluskey, the general secretary of labour union Unite, in London on Friday. Concerns are rising in Britain that two Vauxhall plants could be vulnerable to restructuring moves. Concerns are highlighted by low UK parts content in UK-made vehicles and uncertainties over trade arrangements with the EU after the UK exits the EU in 2019. The current Astra model made at Ellesmere Port is due to be replaced in 2021.

Tavares is also hinting at major cost-cutting as part of a plan to build a new ‘European champion’ that can benefit from larger scale and rescue loss-making Opel/Vauxhall Group – which GM has given up on restructuring for profit. After a meeting in Paris with German labour representatives he talked of building a ‘European Champion with French-German roots’ – a phrase that may have reinforced anxieties in the company’s UK Vauxhall unit.

Tavares has turned PSA from loss into profit and believes that experience stands him in good stead to do the same with Opel.

Tavares said, today: “This company needs help. What we see today with the situation of Opel has a lot of similarities with what we were facing four years ago.”

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Reuters reported that PSA is planning an ‘engineering blitz’ to redevelop Opel’s core models with its own technology. It said PSA wants to build the next Corsa mini on the same engineering architecture as its Peugeot 208 and Citroen C3 models.