As Honda Prepares To Close Its Swindon Factory, Here’s A Rundown Of A Dreadful Few Months For British Industry
Jaguar Land Rover – which recently posted a £3.4bn loss for the last three months of 2018 – announced last month that it would be cutting 4,500 jobs globally, with the majority to come from its 40,000-strong UK workforce.
Announcing the job losses, the firm blamed a sales slowdown in China, a slump in the demand for diesel cars and uncertainty caused by Brexit for the cuts.
Unite, the UK’s biggest manufacturing union, called on ministers to do more to support the country’s car workers, saying they had been “caught in the crosshairs of the government’s botched handling of Brexit”.
Philips
More than 400 jobs were put at risk in January when electronics giant Philips revealed plans to close its factory in Suffolk – the company’s only UK manufacturing plant.
The company said it would close the factory – which manufactures baby bottles – in 2022 in order to move operations to Drachten in the Netherlands.
While chief executive Frans van Houter the company would have to rethink its manufacturing operations in the UK if the country left the customs union, Philips said that Brexit was not a deciding factor behind the move to close the factory.