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UK auto industry under siege as Brexit pressure escalates

Published:Friday | March 15, 2019 | 12:00 AM
In this photo taken on Monday, Feb. 18, 2019, Gregory McDonald, CEO of GoodFish, an injection molding business that supplies the auto industry, poses for a photo in Cannock, England. Worryingly for McDonald, some 30 per cent of the moulded plastic parts his company makes ultimately go to carmakers who say they will face a catastrophe if Britain leaves the European Union without an agreement on future trade. So Goodfish, a nine-year-old company with three plants in England, is preparing to expand in Slovakia, an EU country where Volkswagen, Kia, Peugeot-Citroen and Jaguar Land Rover produce more than one million vehicles a year. AP

Gregory McDonald strides across the spotless factory floor at his company.

He ploughed his life savings into the injection-moulding equipment that churns out plastic parts for everything, from aircraft to sprinkler systems and disposable medical devices.

Worryingly for McDonald, some 30 per cent of the parts ultimately go to carmakers who say they will face a catastrophe if Britain leaves the European Union (EU) without an agreement on future trade.

So Goodfish, a nine-year-old company with three plants in England, is preparing to expand in Slovakia, an EU country where Volkswagen, Kia, Peugeot-Citroen and Jaguar Land Rover produce more than one million vehicles a year. It’s a pragmatic decision for McDonald, who says he can’t afford to be influenced by sentiment or nationalism.

“There’s too much at stake for me, in owning this business, to just stay within Brexitland,” he says at the plant, surrounded by the smell of molten plastic. “And that’s what I decided to do: set up a business in Slovakia.”

McDonald’s decision illustrates the huge pressures facing Britain’s auto industry while the government struggles to negotiate a divorce deal with the EU ahead of Brexit day on March 29. As Prime Minister Theresa May tries to balance competing political interests and hammer out an agreement Parliament will support, people in the car business are making decisions based on production cycles, not politics. At stake are 856,000 jobs, most of them at smaller companies like Goodfish that provide parts and services ultimately destined for the likes of Honda, Nissan and Ford.

Carmakers are being forced to weigh uncertainty about possible tariffs and border checks at a time when the industry faces a wholesale overhaul amid changing consumer habits, concerns about global warming and the shift to electric vehicles.

Investment in Britain’s car industry fell 46 per cent last year and is down 80 per cent over the past three years, partly because of Brexit, according to industry figures. Production dropped 9.1 per cent last year to 1.52 million vehicles. Britain’s carmakers have warned that two-thirds of the country’s global trade could be affected by higher tariffs if the UK leaves the EU without an agreement, as Britain would also fall out of free-trade deals the EU had in place with other countries, like Japan.

“The car industry is at a tipping point,” said David Bailey, an economist at the Aston Business School known for his expertise on Britain’s car industry. “We risk ‘carmaggedon’.”

Vulnerable industry

While businesses from banking to food services have demanded certainty about future trade rules, Britain’s auto industry is particularly vulnerable to Brexit because cars are assembled, not forged in a single place.

Modern manufacturing techniques mean carmakers have plants in several locations – often in different countries – with each relying on the just-in-time delivery of parts from others in their supply chains to make the most efficient use of workers and investment.

This means tariffs and border delays, which don’t exist within the EU but could become a reality in a no-deal Brexit, are an oversized threat to carmakers because they could be applied each time components cross borders on their way, ultimately, to the showroom.

And so far, the bad news keeps piling up.

This month, Nissan cancelled plans to build a new diesel-powered X-Trail sports utility vehicle at its UK plant. That reversed a decision announced two years ago after May’s government offered some £60 million pounds in incentives to ensure the carmaker’s ability to compete after Brexit.

Jaguar Land Rover has announced global cuts of 4,500 jobs, with many in Britain.

Honda plans to close its UK assembly and engine plant, with a loss of 3,500 jobs.

Dyson, a home-grown firm known for vacuum cleaners and hair dryers, has said it will build its new electric car in Singapore.

Altogether, big carmakers have announced more than 10,000 British job cuts in the past two years, figures that don’t include the supply chain, Bailey said.

The loss of models made in the UK would see output in the latter part of the next decade drop to levels not seen since the global financial crisis, Bailey said.

“In short, the stakes for UK auto from ongoing Brexit uncertainty are very high indeed, just at a time when the industry is starting to transform itself towards an electric future,” Bailey said in a recent blog post. “The UK risks losing a wave of investment, and with it, a raft of new technologies.”

Business leaders are getting ever more frustrated with delays in the Brexit talks, their fury spilling over in interviews as they express concerns about foreign investment, jobs and economic growth.

“No business would go into a room negotiating on a platform that says: ‘If you don’t give me what I want I’m going to shoot myself in the foot’,” Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the Confederation of British Industries, told the BBC, her voice quaking with frustration. “It is not a negotiating tactic that is working. We know the impact on the economy. We’re seeing it. Jobs and investment are leaving us daily.”

McDonald, a former hedge fund manager who employs 125 people, has a picture of the Slovak plant he’s got in mind for expansion. He has set up a company there and is ready to finalise the expansion when the time is right.

“By hook or by crook, I think I’ll survive,” he says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the journey will be easy ... I’m quite prepared to do difficult as well.”

– AP