Nissan, the Japanese automaker, has announced that it will slash another 11,000 jobs worldwide and close seven plants as it overhauls the company in the face of sluggish sales. Sliding sales in China and deep discounting in its two largest markets, the US, have severely dented earnings, while a planned merger with Honda and Mitsubishi fell apart in February.
The new cuts put the number of layoffs announced by the firm over the last year at around 20,000, or 15% of its employees. It was not yet known where the jobs would be lost, or if Nissan’s factory at Sunderland would be targeted. The government declared the plant was of “vital importance” to the northeast of England, and that it would “engage closely” with Nissan on its restructuring plans.
Nissan has around 133,500 employees worldwide, with around 6,000 in Sunderland. Two-thirds of the latest redundancies will be from manufacturing, with the remainder from sales, administration roles, research and contract workers, said the company’s chief executive, Ivan Espinosa. The new redundancies follow the 9,000 redundancies Nissan announced in November as part of a cost-cutting drive that it said would cut its worldwide production by a fifth.
In February, negotiations between Nissan and its bigger competitor Honda broke down after the companies were unable to agree on a multi-billion-dollar partnership. The intention was to merge their businesses to counter competition from other firms, particularly in China. The merger would have produced a $60bn (£46bn) motor industry behemoth, the world’s fourth largest vehicle-selling firm after Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai.
Following the breakdown of the talks, then-CEO Makoto Uchida was replaced by Mr Espinosa, who was the company’s chief planning officer and motorsports division head.
