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The president and CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, has revealed that the car company is considering reducing its presence in Europe to boost its profitability in the old continent. In 2022, the oval brand only registered an operating result of 47 million dollars in Europe despite the fact that its income grew by 15.9% to 158,057 million dollars.
These numbers worldwide have been worse (1,829 million euros of losses) and have led Farley to anticipate that the decision they have to face soon is to know “how many engineers, how many people do we need in Europe, and what is the dimension we need in (the segment) of passenger cars. That is the decision.”
These statements were made during a videoconference with analysts and journalists to analyze the financial results for 2022 and the CEO announced that “We won’t wait long to say it”while noting that “we know exactly where our strength is in Europe and we know what we need to do.”
In Europe, Ford is particularly strong in the commercial vehicle segment and it is in the process of converting it to electric (EV), has assured Farley, who understands that it is necessary to reduce the size, concentrate the business and make it more profitable. In the specific case of electric vehicles, he warned that “You can’t be successful if you don’t compete with China”.
This declaration of intent has left more than 6,000 employees of the Valencian Ford factory in Almussafes. The factory’s situation seems to be consolidated in the medium term as it is chosen to develop the company’s electric vehicles in Europe. However, the manufacturing process for these cars requires fewer personnel and, furthermore, it no longer manufactures the S-Max and Galaxy minivans (one year ahead of schedule).
This decrease in production, because it has only been left with the manufacture of the Kuga during the transition to the electrification of the factory, has already entailed a restructuring of work in Almussafes which also has to face the crisis of the distribution of components.
3,000 layoffs
For this reason, the workers have been in a Temporary Employment Regulation File until June 30. The company has distributed the days of unemployment for each employee so that none of them exceeds 70 days of unemployment during this period.
To this delicate situation we must add the reflections of the CEO of the company and that according to the sources consulted by this means could mean a job cuts of about 3,000 jobsalthough it is not yet known if they would exclusively affect the Ford factory in Germany (which lost the pulse with Almusssafes in the race for the electrification of vehicles in Europe) or these layoffs will be distributed among the factories of the American automobile group in the old continent.
