Like other manufacturers, Opel parent Stellantis has great problems buying enough chips for car manufacturing. This also has consequences for the plants in Germany.
The new Opel parent company Stellantis sold significantly fewer cars in the third quarter of this year.
The number of vehicles delivered worldwide fell by 27 percent to 1.13 million units compared to the same quarter of the previous year, as the group, which was merged from the Peugeot and Opel parent company PSA and Fiat Chrysler, reported on Thursday in Amsterdam.
The world’s fourth largest car company was able to compensate for part of the decline through price increases and the sale of more expensive vehicles that were more frequently electric. As a result, sales only fell by 14 percent to 32.6 billion euros. In addition, the company and its dealers have significantly reduced their inventories – from just under 1.2 million vehicles in September 2020 to 689,000.
Stellantis did not provide any information on the profit or sales of the German brand Opel. The expanded European business, on which Opel is focused, ran worse than in the entire group. Quarterly sales fell by 36 percent to 470,000 cars and sales by 21 percent to 11.6 billion euros. For comparison, the values of the predecessor PSA and Fiat-Chrysler from the same quarter of the previous year were used.
A lack of chips is a burden on production
As with other car manufacturers, the international shortage of semiconductors has severely slowed production. According to its own statements, Stellantis was unable to build around 600,000 planned cars in the quarter. This has already had consequences for the Eisenach site in Germany, where employees were put on short-time work until the end of the year.
At the main plant in Rüsselsheim, the job cuts will continue with the closure of the tool shop at the end of the year, announced on Wednesday. IG Metall is also resisting the separation of the production plants from the German Opel company.
Stellantis expects fewer production losses in the coming months. «The trend is positive. We see a stabilization in supply and an improvement in production month-on-month, ”said CFO Richard Palmer. The production downtime due to missing parts will not be as high at the end of the year as in the months of July to September.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
