Last Friday it was reported that senior management at Opel have signed off on a move to shut down its Bochum factory, home of the Zafira van. The closure is expected to cost General Motors more than $754 million in severance and early retirement for its 3,300 employees.
Dan Ammann, currently president of General Motors, stated last October that GM would incur “significant” restructuring costs for closing its assembly plant in Bochum by the end of 2014, according to Reuters.
The clean-up of Bochum and the transition of the Zafira’s tooling to the Rüsselsheim factory, also in Germany, will have additional costs.
The plant closure is part of a General Motors strategy to achieve profitability in 2016 after more than a decade of losses in Europe.
Comment
Just think 3/4 of this cost would have been covered if GM had not wasted $551m on the idiotic Manchester United sponsorship for Chevrolet