Government scrappage schemes operating in Europe, and planned for the UK from later this month, have prompted Nissan to recruit 150 manufacturing staff on fixed-term contracts from June for its Sunderland plant in north east England.

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Nissan is expecting additional, short-term customer demand for the UK-made Micra, Note and Qashqai models as a result of the scrappage schemes, the automaker said on Friday.


Last month Nissan experienced a year-on-year increase in sales in major European markets currently operating scrappage schemes. These included Germany (+9%), France (+31%) and Italy (+21%).


“The temporary manufacturing staff, who will receive four-month contracts, will operate over both of the plant’s two production lines to support a planned volume increase of around 14,000 units in total,” Nissan said.


Nissan Europe manufacturing chief Trevor Mann said: “The impact of the financial crisis is continuing and our 2009 full-year forecasts still reflect a depressed market overall.

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“However, this short term spike in demand, fuelled by a number of scrappage schemes introduced across Europe, is clearly a very welcome boost to business during what is a highly challenging period for all car makers.”


The new UK government scrappage incentive scheme announced last month is made up of a GBP1,000 discount off the price of a new car provided by the government and an extra GBP1,000 offered by automakers through their dealers to owners of pre-1999 models.


Alongside similar offers from several competitors, Nissan has widened its incentive to include a GBP2,000 minimum trade-in allowance on models aged 8-10 years old for any customer – providing he or she is buying one of the carmaker’s British built range: Micra, Note, Qashqai or Qashqai+2.