Nissan plunges to £1.58bn loss
May 12 2009 By nebusiness
CAR maker Nissan today revealed the impact of the recession on the battered industry as it reported a 233.7 billion yen (£1.58bn) annual loss.
But the group - which employs around 4,800 staff in the UK - offered hope of easing conditions as it said it hoped to narrow losses in the year to next March by more than 60 billion yen (£405m).
Nissan’s full-year deficit was also better than feared, despite a significant reversal of the previous year’s 482.3 billion yen profit (£3.26bn).
The Japanese group has been hit hard by the slowdown in global sales, with a programme of devastating job cuts that have heavily impacted the UK.
It announced that 1,200 staff would go - almost one in four - at its Sunderland plant earlier this year, followed a month later by news of 20,000 job losses globally over the next year to combat sliding sales.
Its sales in the year to the end of March plunged 22% against the previous year to 8.44 trillion yen (£57bn), although this was better than its initial forecasts.
Nissan sold 3.4 million vehicles worldwide during the year, down 9.5% from the previous year, as sales dropped in the US, Japan and Europe.
Sales across Europe fell 16.7% to 530,000 cars in one of the worst affected regions after the US, where the figure was down 19.1%.
But sales grew in China, according to Nissan.
