Civic pride as work begins at Honda factory
Japanese car giant Honda was today starting to build vehicles at its second UK plant, after it was completed on time.
The Swindon plant is the first new car factory to be built in the UK since Toyota opened its site near Derby eight years ago.
Workers at the new £130m Swindon factory have started producing the new Civic five-door model ahead of the plant’s official opening in September, when full production will be achieved.
Honda has launched its final recruitment drive to hire 200 workers, taking its Swindon workforce to 4,000.
The company had warned that it might have to recruit workers from overseas because of a skills shortage but it said today that the problem had eased in recent months and it had found enough engineers and other employees from the UK.
The new car plant will increase annual production by 100,000 vehicles to 250,000 by 2002.
Honda aims to export the new Civic three-door model from Swindon to Japan and the United States this autumn and the CR-V model to the US early next year.
Minoru Harada, president of Honda Europe said one of the company’s major challenges was to build the profitability of its European operations after suffering significant losses in Europe last year.
He said a number of factors led to the poor financial performance including the weakness of the euro and weak sales because of pricing issues in the UK.
Mr Harada said sales of the Civic five-door were up by 25% in Europe in the last few months and the new three-door was expected to provide a ‘‘significant boost’’ to Honda’s sales next year.
He repeated Honda’s support for the UK joining the euro but said the company was working on the assumption that this would not happen in the next two years.
A bigger proportion of components in Swindon-built Civics will be sourced from the eurozone, up from the previous 10% to 30% and moving towards 50.
