Swindon Plant to Close for 50 Days

[RichardA]

Honda's Swindon plant - home of the Euro Civic and CR-V - will close early next year for a period of 50 days. During February and March 2009, production at Swindon will be halted as the credit crunch and fall in sales take a bite. However, there are no plans for redundancies. Earlier in the year, Honda announced plans to cut production by 32,000 units and is now set to produce 175,000 units in the 2008/09 financial year.

However, the situation could improve as the new Jazz will shift production from Japan to Swindon later this year.

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[culzean]

What do members think about this move? Is this a breath of fresh air in the normal UK business practice of making people redundant at the first sign of a downturn? The Japanese have a lot to teach us about good business, not least that the road to good employee loyalty is a two way street.

My feeling is that Honda UK will probably use this time to install new equipment for making the Jazz in the UK - something to look forward to, and it's nice to see this vote of confidence in the UK by a major world producer of high quality cars.

[guest238]

We should indeed be thankful the Jazz is coming to Swindon. The old was going to be built here, but Honda kicked up a fuss about the UK not joining the Euro so we got the 2nd gen CR-V instead.

[RichardA]

As noted, Swindon 'closed' a few weeks back. Now it's the MINI factory at Oxford to shed some jobs, much to displeasure (see the news at ten - things got heated!).

With Japan now officially in recession, I'll be very suprised if the Jazz wil actually be made at Swindon. On the otherhand with combination of the Jazz, Civic & CR-V, Swindon should get a new model every three years or so. At present I think Swindon was suffering with the usual downturn in demard (economic condition notwithstanding) as the Civic and CR-V designs are a good couple of years old.