Whole region gives Nissan a push
Nissan has been edged out of top place in the 250, but it's certainly not sidelined in the region's economic strategy. Brian Nicholls reports.
THE North East is waging a multi- million-pound gamble to convince the parent Nissan that, of all its global factories, Washington is the ideal one to build electric cars.
Tyne and Wear has been introduced to electric cars bought from a £10m fund set up to help roll out charging points throughout the region.
Bosses at regeneration agencies, government departments and leading manufacturers have forked out the cash in their gamble to make the North East Europe’s leading producer of electric cars.
Nissan is not saying yet where it will build the next generation of eco friendly cars, despite being a part of the regional consortium. This group comprises One North East, Newcastle University, Washington-based Tanfield Engineering’s Smith Electric Vehicles, the taxi maker LTI Vehicles, Ford, AVID Vehicles of Cramlington, Liberty Electric Cars of Oxford and Nissan.
Nissan is being paid already to supply 15 electric cars, as part of a 35-car deal involving other consortium companies.
However, it will probably be 2011 at least before Nissan makes a manufacturing decision that could see thousands of jobs secured and more created in Washington’s supply line. Stiff rivalry to the North East bid is expected from France and Spain.
Nissan has said production of the new cars will take into account where batteries for the vehicles are made.
Chief executive Carlos Ghosn is thought more likely to select the Washington plant if a car battery factory is built.
Regardless of this temporary uncertainty and the slip to second place on the Top 250 list, Nissan has shown during the big meltdown of car sales a determination to recover which must be inspirational to many other companies in the region, whatever their sector, in their suffering from the global recession.
Last October Nissan cut production. It brought in short-time working for 800 staff. Temporary job contracts were not renewed.
By December, besides four-day working on two production lines making Notes and Micras, the firm cut production of the Qashqai, one of the UK’s top 10 best sellers, as other manufacturers cut back their production also.
In January, with the world’s car sales down by 50%, some 1,200 Washington jobs were axed – 23% of the workforce. In February Nissan warned it might have to shed 20,000 jobs globally in the next 12 months. But by May, weekend working was being re-introduced at Washington. And last month Nissan was able to launch its annual graduate training programme, having already restarted its apprenticeships.
On June 9 it created 100 jobs thanks to the scrappage scheme and was taking production workers back on four-month contracts after the previous month’s decision to create 150 temporary jobs.
With the scrappage Nissan’s smaller models such as the Note and Micra are proving especially attractive to buyers.
The Qashqai’s ride to popularity also defies the general sales drop more recently down to 25%. The Qashqai in fact has been selling 73% more year on year.
In April Nissan got a £380m loan from the European Union Bank to start developing the “green” cars, and about half the loan was to build a family of electric cars in Washington.
Meanwhile it has won a Queen’s Award for the fourth time for increasing its overseas revenues by 51% to more than £2.321m a year over three years – and for selling more than 80% of its product overseas.
Most of these sales are in Europe. But 3% go to Japan and sales have been made in 11 new markets over three years. In that time overseas sales have totalled more than half a billion pounds.
It looks as if the Arriva-Nissan tussle will continue in the next Top 250 too!
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