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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 19 2019, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the civic-minded? dept.

Honda Confirms Plan to Leave Britain as Brexit Looms

The Japanese automaker Honda has become the latest business to make plans to leave Britain as global forces reshape the car industry and the country prepares to exit the European Union.

Honda will close its plant in Swindon, England, which employs 3,500 workers, by 2021, it confirmed on Tuesday. The factory, which produces about 150,000 cars a year, will close once its current line of Civic cars comes to an end.

"In light of the unprecedented changes that are affecting our industry, it is vital that we accelerate our electrification strategy and restructure our global operations accordingly," Katsushi Inoue, the chief officer for European operations, said in a statement.

The decision was a "devastating decision for Swindon and the U.K.," Greg Clark, Britain's business secretary, said in a statement. "The news is a particularly bitter blow to the thousands of skilled and dedicated staff who work at the factory, their families and all of those employed in the supply chain," Mr. Clark said, adding that he would convene a "task force" to keep the employees in work.

Also at CNN.


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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:56AM (1 child)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:56AM (#803914) Journal

    Honda are trying to be very polite and not inflame the ERG/UKIP/Alt-Wrong/Far-Wrong types who are threatening the country with "civil unrest" if they don't get their Brexit. They are also trying not to upset the Conservative Party in general because they don't want to burn their bridges.

    Anyone who works for a living in the UK can tell you this. What companies are saying in public regarding Brexit is very mild indeed compared to their internal discussions and preparations.

    Disclaimer: I do not work for Honda.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:43AM (#803935)

    Honda are trying to be very polite and not inflame the ERG/UKIP/Alt-Wrong/Far-Wrong types who are threatening the country with "civil unrest" if they don't get their Brexit

    Eh?, I watched a bespectacled young oik of an economist on the Beeb rabbit on at length about how the Japanese have been planning to move production to the Far East for a while (closer to what they see as their main future growth market), mutterings about how it was more or less the bribes, sorry, subsidies which made them irrationally set up shop in Britain in the first place, and the EU-Japan deal removing the final barrier to this shift. Only as an afterthought, he added, oh Brexit..
    Seems like the only people surprised by this move are the poor plebs who worked there.
    As to 'civil unrest', if it happens it'll be fun watching the confused looks on the faces of the riot police, they're more used to cracking the skulls of lefties, students and pseudo-hippies, not, as it were, their eigenes Volk..

    Anyone who works for a living in the UK can tell you this. What companies are saying in public regarding Brexit is very mild indeed compared to their internal discussions and preparations.

    Well, as someone whose post was made redundant allegedly thanks to the 'Brexit preparations' the lot I worked for made (blah, blah, blah, projected downturn, blah, blah, blah, scaling back operations, blah, blah, blah ) can I just say that there's a serious amount of egregious shite being talked, and they're all lining up to see how best they can use the whole Brexit debacle as the ultimate fucking excuse for every shitty weasel move/stunt they've dreamed about implementing but felt they couldn't get away with...
    Hint: my post was made redundant, coz Brexit...fast forward a couple of months a remarkably similar but lower paid post is filled by a minion I trained..

    Bitter, Moi?