The car company Audi says that staff at its plant in the Brussels municipality of Vorst will return to work next week. The assembly lines were due to be up and running again this week. However, the restart date has now been put back. When exactly production will resume is one of the subjects that will be discussed at an extraordinary Work’s Council meeting that will take place on Thursday.
Production at Audi Brussels to resume next week, extraordinary Work’s Council meeting planned for Thursday
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It is still unclear exactly when cars will start rolling off the production line again at the Audi Brussels plant in Vorst. The factory has been closed for several weeks. The closure has been partly due to the annual holiday. However, a lack of demand for the Audi Q8 e-tron electric cars that are built at the Brussels plant has meant that the closure has been much longer than would otherwise have been the case.
At the beginning of July, the German car manufacturer announced that it plans to restructure and this will have an impact on employment at its Brussels plant. Audi has decided to phase out production of the e-tron at Vorst earlier than planned due to poor sales figures that have resulted in overcapacity.
Compared to its other plants, Audi’s Brussels factory is expensive. Experts say that this is due in part to high labour costs, but also due to the plant’s location. The factory is sandwiched between a residential area and railway lines.
Threat of closure
As part of Audi’s restructuring plans around 1,500 jobs will go at the Brussels plant in October with the possibility of a further 1,100 job losses by during the course of next year. In this case the remaining few hundred jobs at would go at the end of next year. If this were to be the case it would spell the end of the Brussels plant.
However, Audi says that no final decision has about the closure of is Brussels factory. The company says that various options are still open, including building another model in Brussels or using its factory here to produce parts for other plants.
Audi Brussels is a modern plant that is fully equipped for the production of electric cars. To this end millions of euro were invested in the plant.