Efforts to find a new investor for the Brussels plant of German carmaker Audi have failed. The news comes from union ACV-Metea following a special works council. ‘Audi, and by extension the Volkswagen group, no longer wishes to invest in this site,’ says Jan Baetens of ACV-Metea. One potential new investor walked away last week. ‘This means the closure of the site.’
The future of Audi Brussels has been uncertain since the beginning of this year. Only one model is still being built at the factory, the Q8 e-tron, an electric SUV. But its sales have not lived up to expectations.
At the end of February Audi announced that the successor to the Q8 e-tron will be built in Mexico. This was followed in early July by the announcement that 1,400 jobs (almost half the workforce) would be lost at Audi Brussels due to restructuring and the early cessation of production of the Q8. Normally, these workers were supposed to leave the workforce this month, but that plan has since been axed.
To keep the plant alive, a new model had to be found. But in early September it emerged that that no new model would be produced in Brussels. Efforts to find a new investor for the site have now also failed.