Last year, the Ford production in Craiova reached a record high, nine years after the first model was manufactured by the American company in this plant. Ford has about 4,600 employees in Craiova and the number will increase by 1,700 by autumn when the second model is to join the current production of the EcoSport SUV.
Ford has a daily cadence of about 600 cars and production has reached the level of 140,000 units, the highest ever. Ford has recently announced a restructuring of European operations and will lay off several thousand employees, but the Craiova plant will not be affected, hotnews.ro reports.
Of the cars produced in Craiova, 111,000 were sold in Europe where last year the company sold 1.35 million cars from all models. Fiesta was the most sold model with 270,000 units, followed by Focus, Kuga and Transit Costum.
Three quarters of sales are made in five countries: the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain.
Ford announced in the spring of 2018 that it will manufacture a second model in the Craiova plant, which means new investments of EUR 200 million and 1,500 new jobs.
Contradictory information about new model to be produced in Craiova
A new SUV model will be launched for production in the Craiova plant, but information on this issue are contradictory. According to carscoops.com, the model will be manufactured on the Fiesta platform and could replace, at some point, the current EcoSport. The new model has more ‘athletic’ looks and will compete with Mazda CX-3, Hyundai Kona, Kia Stonic and Opel Crossland X.
In the other hand, Automotive News Europe says the new SUV will be a small dimension one, could be named Puma and will be publicly presented by autumn. Puma might be revealed at the Frankfurt motor show and will replace EcoSport, Inovev says in turn.