Ford "reduces speed" and will eliminate thousands of jobs in Europe in order to cut costs



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The company has announced that it will also reduce sales models and may close factories in the old continent. The automaker's cost cutting offensive comes in a region that has been barging on its profits for years.

Ford, which employs approximately 54,000 workers across the continent, mainly in Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, will also review its joint venture in Russia, which is part of a series of measures called by Steven Armstrong, a European Ford controller, a "change". radical in business. "He did not specify the number of possible job cuts and said that the closure of the facilities is a possibility of rationalizing the business.

"There will be a huge impact on the entire region," Armstrong acknowledged. "This is not a problem for one or two years. We have periods of profitability, but not at the expected level.

Last year, Ford launched a restructuring plan of $ 11 billion, after both Europe and Asia recorded losses and increased investment costs in electric and autonomous vehicles. Like many other automakers, the company has warned that it will not reach its targets by 2018, while its CEO, Jim Hackett, has dropped the target to reach an 8% profit margin by 2020.

Sales are slowing down

At a time when the global car market showed its first signs of slowdown after years of growth, Ford restructured its global operations by leaving the US limousine market to focus on larger vehicles and focus on local production in China. Europe was particularly difficult for the company due to the key market in the UK, where chaos in the neighborhood of Brexit created an additional challenge.

The measure is another sign of pressure for traditional car manufacturers, as they face fundamental technological changes, stricter environmental regulations and trade disputes. Jaguar Land Rover from Tata Motors, formerly part of Ford, intends to eliminate 4,500 jobs in response to a slowdown in sales.

Ford was one of the US carmakers, which last year did not reach sales expectations, causing concern that the slowdown will occur in 2019. China, which led the growth of industry, showed on Wednesday that Car sales in the country were first reduced in more than two decades.

In a videoclip, Armstrong said that the future of European operations in transitional vehicles and off-road vehicles and that the compact sedans and vans are in decline. He pointed out that any action taken by the company must be significantly more dramatic if, by the end of March, brexit is to be prepared without consent.

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