Ford Almussafes distances itself from major car manufacturers in Europe

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Specific, Ford unit purchases in Europe fell 4.6% last year, the equivalent of nearly 17,500 fewer vehicles.. Or what is the same as a company that, before the pandemic, achieved almost a million sales of its cars – including in this report registrations in the United Kingdom, which, with its exit from the European Union, is no longer included in the same statistics. – only 362,805 cars are currently sold within the community (or 518,371 if you add the British territory).

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These losses increasingly forced the American company It moves away from the records of other major European manufacturers, which in all cases ended 2023 with positive results. Moreover, it does Ford Being in 12th place in these sales, it not only fails to close the gap with the top ten major automobile companies, but is increasingly moving further away. It’s not for nothing that in 2022 its gap in cars sold will be with the tenth manufacturer, Kia, amounted to 49,623 units. Today, this difference has almost doubled to 90,588 vehicles.

Ford Almussafes car production, in image file.

Slow electric landing

This unfavorable context comes in the midst of an electrical transformation that is progressing slower than expected for the company, a context that influences the determination of what the future of the Almussafes plant in Valencia will be. Without going into detail, company officials told the plant’s majority union, UGT, in November of their decision to “delay” investment in electricity. signature delay actions adopted worldwide.

Meanwhile, in the company’s Valencian heartland, 2023 has confirmed the start of the productive end of the Transit van. The same, in April next year, will follow the path of Mondeo, S-Max and Galaxy for the last two years and bid farewell to Almussafes, leaving the Kuga as the only model in production.

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This challenging reality, which is expected to add to the plant’s workload, has become a the plant’s second worst productive year in decades. A blow that, compared to the performance of the sector in Spain, was obvious. While production at Almussafes fell by 10.57% to about 220,000 vehicles, the average for the rest of the country’s plants increased by 10.95%. The 2024 horizon, despite this week’s Kuga redesign, doesn’t look much more positive.

Vehicles produced at the Ford Almussafes plant in a file image.

Perth help

What does point in the right direction is Ford’s acceptance (reported exclusively in this newspaper) of the $37.2 million the government gave them last September. the first line – dedicated to the production of batteries – the second call of the Strategic Project for the Recovery and Economic Transformation (Perte) of electric and connected vehicles. Not in vain, this was the first confident step taken by the Oval brand in recent months. Now the multinational is waiting for the chief executive to decide Perth’s other line on the electric vehicle value chain, a key element in determining when and how electricity investment will come to Almussafes.