Auto industry
Search for investors for the Audi plant in Brussels ended unsuccessfully
The end of the Volkswagen Group’s electric car factory in Belgium is getting closer and closer. Negotiations on a social plan for the 3,000 employees are ongoing.
The last hope for an investor to continue running the Audi factory in Brussels has been dashed. “The potential investor from the commercial vehicle sector has withdrawn the expression of interest,” the Volkswagen subsidiary announced on Tuesday. “There is no potential investor for the location, so the active search for investors has ended.”
Audi has already announced that car production in Brussels will end at the end of February. A social plan for the 3,000 employees is being negotiated with the works council and the unions. There should be no layoffs until the end of this year.
Like its parent company Volkswagen, Audi is in crisis and is talking to the general works council in Ingolstadt about how redundancies can be avoided in Germany. Audi wants to close the plant in Brussels and has been discussing this with works councils and unions for four months.
The factory, which employs 3,000 people, produces a single model, the Q8 e-tron electric SUV. Its sales figures are shrinking. The factory has very high logistics costs because there are only a few suppliers nearby. The location between a residential area, railway tracks and the motorway makes expansion difficult. The search for alternative uses did not produce a viable solution for preserving the factory and jobs.
dpa
Source: Stern
