TOKYO (Reuters) – Honda has agreed to sell its only British car factory in Swindon, in the south of England, to logistics giant Panattoni, a company spokesman said on Saturday, as the new owner plans to make a major on-site investment.
The Japanese automaker, which produces about a tenth of the production of 1.5 million cars in Britain, made the decision two years after announcing its intention in 2019 to stop production at its Swindon plant. The nearest plant is expected to cause 3,500 jobs lost.
Honda, which has been struggling in Europe, said the plant’s closure was not related to Britain’s exit from the European Union, but it needed to focus activities in the regions where it expects to sell most cars.
Panattoni said he is making a £ 700m ($ 965m) investment in his logistics-related development, with the aim of creating new jobs, as soon as Honda completes the decommissioning of the factory that builds its Civic hatchbacks, probably on next spring, the Financial Times reported. early.
The latest action followed the decisions of electronics firms Sony and Panasonic to move its UK headquarters to the EU, while Hitachi filed a nuclear power project in Britain amid Brexit.
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Reporting by Eimi Yamamitsu and Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Shri Navaratnam