In late 2016, Renault’s Le Mans plant will begin making chassis components for the
next-generation Nissan Micra.
This programme will increase the plant’s workload by
about eight per cent and draw an investment budget totalling €7 million.
The
Le Mans plant will meet all the Nissan Micra chassis needs for the Renault Flins
plant (near Paris), which is set to manufacture the new Micra from 2016
onwards, with an expected output of 132,000 vehicles per year.
Thus
Renault will be building the whole chassis for Micra in France, and assembling
the car in France as
well at Flins.
Nissan's
decision to have the new Micra chassis made at Renault's Le Mans plant follows
the competitive performance agreement of 13 March 2013, which enabled the
Renault Le Mans plant to successfully challenge rival production facilities as
regards fulfilment of Nissan's performance demands.
Eighteen
months after Renault and its trade unions signed the competitive performance
agreement, the company can be seen to be forging ahead and meeting its
commitments, including that of "maintaining or developing business at its French
manufacturing sites".
Production
of chassis components for the new Micra will boost the workload by around 8 per
cent in a full-year for Renault's Le Mans plant.
Volume
production is scheduled to start in late 2016, with production output,
estimated at 132,000 vehicles in a full-year going to the Renault Flins
assembly plant.
The
programme draws a site investment of €7 million, most of which will be spent on
new machinery that will go a long way to securing sustained plant business in
the future.
In
announcing phase two of Renault's “Drive the Change” in February 2014, Carlos
Ghosn, president of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, emphasized the need for both
partner companies to
improve the performance, with one of the ways being to develop
cross-manufacturing, with one partner making vehicles or powertrains for the
other.
Months
after the announcement, the Alliance’s synergies programme appears to be gathering momentum; the Micra chassis programme for Le Mans marks a major
step forward in Alliance cross-manufacturing.
The
Le Mans plant dates back to 1920, and has the longest history of any of the
Renault group's production facilities today. Le Mans is the Renault group's
primary chassis design and manufacturing centre. It claims to host “unparalleled engineering
and production know-how” in this speciality. This plant is also the leading
industrial employer in its region.
As
well as being used on Renault-badged vehicles, the chassis assemblies made at
the Le Mans plant also appear on European-made Dacia and Nissan vehicles.
The
plant's 2,200-strong workforce endeavours not only to meet the most demanding
requirements on quality, delivery times, cost and safety, but to toughen them
up.
The
Le Mans centre is currently involved in practically all of the Renault group's
forthcoming product projects, and makes chassis components for Clio 4, Captur
and New Trafic, plus Lodgy, Sandero and Duster for Dacia, and Qashqai and Note
for Nissan. If there is a strike at the plant it could impact on the production
of vehicles of both companies.
It
makes all the chassis parts for ZOE (rear axle, rotating front-end, subframe,
bottom arm), plus the battery support and engine cradle.
Parts
made at Le Mans are dispatched to Renault group assembly plants not only in
France and other European countries, but also farther afield to Turkey, Morocco
and Brazil.
The
plant exports 55 per cent of production output outside France and 25 per cent
outside Europe.
In
2013, the plant made: 684,000 front axle assemblies; 853,000 rear axle
assemblies; 7,700,000 rotors; 705,000 sub-frames and 2,561,000 bottom arms.
The
2013 workforce amounted to a six per cent increase of that of 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment