Seat plans to shuffle its Martorell production schedule to churn out more of its strong-selling Leon model this year, a top trades union official told just-auto on Monday.
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VW-owned Seat will idle two shifts on assembly line three to squeeze out more Leons amid rising demand for the sporty sedan, Seat representative for union CGT Paco Selas said.
Seat expects the Leon to sharply outperform a group-wide sales increase of 6% in 2006, Selas said.
As part of the changes, Seat will make 1,700 and 1,000 fewer Ibiza and Altea models respectively this year.
An undisclosed number of Toledos will also be taken out of the schedule, Selas noted.
Line one (which makes the Cordoba and Ibiza) will be stopped for two days late this month, he added.
The remaining line three shift will make an additional 200 Leons per day, according to Selas, who said daily production will rise to 583 units per day.
Loss-making Seat is recovering its fortunes and will likely surpass this year’s 430,000-unit production target, Selas predicted.
The production changes will begin on 28 August and end on 8 September. The company will resume normal production on 12 September.
Selas criticised Seat for not revealing its intended stock levels to workers.
“They keep us in the dark about how much overstock they can handle and this is not fair because these hours [from the shift cancellations] don’t come for free,” Selas claimed.
“We’ll have to make them up to the company later.”
Ivan Castano
