Plant’s French owner PSA cut 250 jobs at the site this week to add to the 400 losses announced in October, taking the workforce down to around 1,200 and this has led to fears it may close. Tony McDonough reports

Fears remain over the future of the Vauxhall car factory at Ellesmere Port after the UK’s Business Secretary failed to get reassurances from its French owner.

Days after the announcement of the loss of 250 jobs at the plant Greg Clark flew to Paris to meet with Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Groupe PSA, the French carmaker behind Peugeot and Citroën. But it is understood he has returned without any promises from the company.

PSA acquired the Opel and Vauxhall brands from General Motors Co for £1.9bn earlier this year to become the second-biggest carmaker in Europe by sales.

Workers at Ellesmere Port producing around 140,000 Astras every year. In October, PSA announced the loss of 400 jobs at the plant and this week’s announcement takes that figure to 650. It will cut the workforce down to around 1,200.

PSA insists there are no plans to close the site but a spokesman said this week: “Ellesmere Port must rebuild its competitiveness because it is less competitive than our factories in Europe.”

This week the new managing director of Vauxhall in the UK said the future of Ellesmere Port was linked to a turnaround in the sales performance of its vehicles in the UK where demand fell 22% in 2017 compared with the overall market fall of 5.7%

Stephen Norman said: “If we manage to make a radical improvement in Vauxhall’s fortunes in the UK and my future colleagues in Opel across the continent do the same in their markets, particularly in Germany, then there will be a requirement not only for every possible unit of production that we’ve got but maybe even more besides.”

In October PSA said a new generation Astra model was planned for the early 2020s and that it was necessary to make Ellesmere Port as competitive as possible so it was in a position to secure production of the vehicle.

It said Brexit was not a factor in deciding the long-term future of the factory but, prior to the EU Referendum in June 2016 the then UL Chancellor George Osborne warned a leave vote put factories such as the Vauxhall plant at greater risk of closure.

The EU is by far the biggest market for British-made cars with eight out of 10 vehicles made in the UK sold elsewhere in the single market.

And it is not just about export sales. Around 60% of the components of the Cheshire-produced Astra are imported from other suppliers in the EU. Any imposition of trade tariffs on goods coming in from Europe after 2019 would be a severe blow to the factory’s competitiveness.

According to PSA Ellesmere Port’s current manufacturing costs were “significantly higher” than those of similar facilities in France.