Stellantis boss allays redundancy fears at Mangualde car plant

Plans to cut costs at car manufacturer PSA were averted because of the merger between Fiat Chrysler and PSA in 2019 to create Stellantis.

The Portuguese CEO of Stellantis, the group which resulted from the merger between Fiat Chrysler and PSA (Peugeot, Citroen and Opel), Carlos Tavares said that the fusion created synergies worth €8.4Bn through cost cuts from the creation of the new company in January 2021.

Thankfully, however, the cost-cutting does not look set to affect workers at the company’s plant in Mangualde in the north of Portugal near Viseu.

That amount from synergies was more than double the initial expectations when the merger was announced in 2019, and represents an increase in relation to the updated projections of €5Bn from expected savings within five years following the completion of the merger that created one of the largest car and van manufacturers in the world.

Although it has not yet been specified where these cost cuts were made, the group’s cost-cutting measures have included the company’s operations supply chain, as well as cuts in jobs.

“We’re not looking for a road map, we know where we are going”, said the Stellantis CEO at an investors’ event at the company’s headquarters in the US when the company’s strategy to 2023 was unveiled.

Since the merger was agreed in 2019, Stellantis reduced its workforce by 47,500 by the end of 2023.

And this year it plans to shed thousands of jobs in the US and Italy. In March, the company reached an agreement to slash 2,500 jobs in Italy and 400 jobs in the US.

In Portugal, the CEO of Stellantis – which has a factory in Mangualde from where it will produce electric vehicles from this year – insisted in January that the factory is safe from future cost-cutting plans.