Speculation is building that Ford is poised to announce the closure of its Southampton Assembly Plant, located north east of the south coast city, at Wide Lane, Swaythling. Media reports suggest Ford management will meet UK unions on 25 October to outline details of the closure.
Confirmation of the closure would be the second such announcement in as many days, the OEM having already confirmed the shuttering of its Genk, Belgium plant by the end of 2014.
The Southampton plant, which has survived a number of closure rumours in previous years, is a relatively small operation in the Ford of Europe manufacturing network, employing approximately 500. The plant assembled around 28,000 Transits in 2011. The Transit is Ford’s only UK-assembled vehicle, with the Dagenham and Bridgend facilities specialising in engine production.
The Transit is also assembled in Kocaeli in Turkey, alongside the company’s smaller Transit Connect model. Ford has planned to cease Transit panel van production entirely at Southampton, transferring output to Turkey, leaving the UK facility to just make chassis cab variants of the new Transit model. The van-making plant near Istanbul, Turkey has annual capacity to produce 320,000 units, although investment is scheduled to raise this to 400,000.
At the OEM’s 6 September ‘Go Further’ event in Amsterdam, the company confirmed that in the light commercial vehicle segment, it is working towards a complete redesign of its range over the next two years. The company noted that CV sales in Europe are forecast to grow by more than 30% to nearly 4 million units a year by 2017. For the small CV segment alone, the growth is expected to be even more dramatic at 70%.
To tap this growing segment, Ford outlined the launch of the new Transit, Transit Custom, Transit Connect and Transit Courier, as well as a family of new Tourneo people carriers. The five-seater is called simply Tourneo Connect, while the seven-seater is known as the Grand Tourneo Connect. In total, Ford is aiming for annual sales of 500,000 commercial vehicles per year by 2016, lifting its share of the European CV market from 9.3% today to more than 13%.
