Nissan

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joedurham said:
Friend of mine's brother is an engineer with Nissan in Barcelona. Last week he was sent to Tangiers to help look for site of new macro- factory. He says it is direct threat to the future of the Sunderland plant.

God help Sunderland, the region and our club if this is true.
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I'm not sure if someone suggested similar a few years back, even down to the plant being relocated to within the EU. The thing is Tangiers rings a bell with me.

Nissan not so long back told their workforce that the future of the Sunderland plant was secure. That said, I've heard various conflicting messages over the years since the Brexit campaign really took hold a good few years back.

But as I said, both France (parent company Renault) and Tangiers both stick in my head. They're already manufacturing the Dacia there with the 1 millionth coming off the production line back in July 2017. With lower wages and an association agreement with EU already in place, the attraction of such a move is especially obvious if any deal with the EU is unfavorable or there is a hard Brexit.

We can't be certain anything is actually going to happen, but I've been in situations where outside people have come in, promised no immediate changes then later initiated mass redundancies or closed the plant down.

If it does happen, then not meaning to be cruel and repeating an earlier comment, the "turkey have indeed voted for Christmas."

I think the final outcome will be we'll do some sort of deal with the EU, but a few years later will rejoin the single market and customs union due to us being at a disadvantage to our European competitors. But will that come soon enough for some multinationals to save jobs in the UK?

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Separately, I don't think we'll ever rejoin the EU as their push towards ever closer union will make them a much different beast a few years down the road compared to what they are now. Also, we'd have to satisfy various conditions to rejoin, which I don't think we'd be able to satisfy if the EU moves towards a "United States". Iceland have been made to jump through hoops in their attempt to join, leading to a delay whilst they themselves have a referendum.

I wouldn't put it past possibly France and especially Spain to block any attempt to rejoin several years down the road. The Spanish especially would likely make the status of Gibraltar a precondition to us attempting to rejoin.
 
vinegar hill said:
A car plant in Africa being a threat to the Sunderland plant?
Nah.
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you can unplug a call centre and move it piss easy! A skilled automated car plant with a skilled automated supply chain operating JIT/kanban to Nissan quality ppm is a different beast altogether.
Internal Competitive tendering model means they wont win everything they go for but recent investment there and awarding of Infiniti is a massive vote of confidence in the plant
 
Lloyd Christmas said:
Nissans biggest market in Europe is the UK. They no where there bread is buttered
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Not true. Half the cars built in Sunderland are shipped to mainland Europe.

---Nemo--- said:
They'll be hard pressed to find the required quality of staff. :)
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This. Too much skill and infrastructure here to just up-sticks and go in blind and expect a bunch of unskilled workers to launch new models and satisfy customer demand.
 
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heroesof73 said:
you can unplug a call centre and move it piss easy! A skilled automated car plant with a skilled automated supply chain operating JIT/kanban to Nissan quality ppm is a different beast altogether.
Internal Competitive tendering model means they wont win everything they go for but recent investment there and awarding of Infiniti is a massive vote of confidence in the plant
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There's already a plant in Tangiers the new plant could be built in the vicinity of, thus the skilled automated supply chain operating JIT/kanban to Nissan quality ppm is in place in Morocco and nearby as it stands.

You have Unipres next door who are Japanese, Miking up the road who are a Japanese joint venture with steel stockists William King and Lear down in Houghton-le-Spring, all of whom could up and off easily. Factory equipment is surprisingly easy to relocate, with replication of layout at a purpose-built site not really that much of a problem.

benizz said:
Shipyards went.

Nissan can go.

It's up to the person to find work, not work to find the person.
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So people will have to leave to find work if Nissan and their supply chain go, possibly seeing Sunderland's situation resemble Detroit?
 
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yyy said:
There's already a plant in Tangiers the new plant could be built in the vicinity of, thus the skilled automated supply chain operating JIT/kanban to Nissan quality ppm is in place in Morocco and nearby as it stands.



So people will have to leave to find work if Nissan and their supply chain go, possibly seeing Sunderland's situation resemble Detroit?
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doubt the supply chain would want to take a chance if the penalties for stopping lines in body shop or T&C were set to same % of cost as here.
Automated plant takes a lot of setting up as does achieving quality ppm. Cant see them walking away from plant here just like that with investment in plant but as I said above internal competitive tendering may mean they dont win new models to replace those being phased out
 
heroesof73 said:
doubt the supply chain would want to take a chance if the penalties for stopping lines in body shop or T&C were set to same % of cost as here.
Automated plant takes a lot of setting up as does achieving quality ppm. Cant see them walking away from plant here just like that with investment in plant but as I said above internal competitive tendering may mean they dont win new models to replace those being phased out
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I hear you, however, look at examples of companies in the local supply chain.

You have Unipres next door who are Japanese, Miking up the road who are a Japanese joint venture with steel stockists William King and American company Lear down in Houghton-le-Spring, all of whom could up and off easily. Factory equipment is surprisingly easy to relocate, with replication of layout at a purpose-built site not really that much of a problem. The intellectual information for the automated set-ups is in place, meaning unlike initial set-up, replication is not as difficult as you might think.

Whilst not a direct example, there's an oil and gas company on the Team Valley. It came close to closure early 2017 and only a major upsurge in business saved it. Equipment, factory set ups and supply chain were already in place to relocate production to India and the USA, where the parent company were based.

We'll agree to disagree here. :)
 
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yyy said:
I hear you, however, look at examples of companies in the local supply chain.

You have Unipres next door who are Japanese, Miking up the road who are a Japanese joint venture with steel stockists William King and American company Lear down in Houghton-le-Spring, all of whom could up and off easily. Factory equipment is surprisingly easy to relocate, with replication of layout at a purpose-built site not really that much of a problem. The intellectual information for the automated set-ups is in place, meaning unlike initial set-up, replication is not as difficult as you might think.

Whilst not a direct example, there's an oil and gas company on the Team Valley. It came close to closure early 2017 and only a major upsurge in business saved it. Equipment, factory set ups and supply chain were already in place to relocate production to India and the USA, where the parent company were based.

We'll agree to disagree here. :)
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I know the supply chain marra most (if not all) of whom are as you would expect with links to Japan. Unipres themselves had plenty problems supplying Nissan a good few years ago which is why they were told to change their name!
Agree to disagree indeed and the clue in my username is I dont expect you to be back saying " I told you so" :D;)
 
heroesof73 said:
I know the supply chain marra most (if not all) of whom are as you would expect with links to Japan. Unipres themselves had plenty problems supplying Nissan a good few years ago which is why they were told to change their name!
Agree to disagree indeed and the clue in my username is I dont expect you to be back saying " I told you so" :D;)
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You sound like you're in Nissan QA or at least in the QA department of a closely related company. :)
 
yyy said:
You sound like you're in Nissan QA or at least in the QA department of a closely related company. :)
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nah, worked in the sector with supply base big players and on plant as well plenty assisting them with new starts.
Used to also take groups round on plant visits which were always very well received. Used to work in a local College back in the day and had lots of TLs and Supervisors come on courses. Then moved to work in the sector with Nissan and supply base directly. Doug Lorraine was training manager back then and amazing how many of Supes then have gone on from there to top positions in Company which furthers my opinion as to why the plant has a good future:cool:

Edit, you must be close to if not in sector when you use QA not QC:)
 
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