For a few years now, there has been no respite for the Valencian automotive industry. First was the pandemic and the breakdown of supply chains and meanwhile, the urgency of the transition to electric. Meanwhile, the Perte in the sector, projects such as the SEAT-Volkswagen battery gigafactory in Sagunt and Ford's determination to stay in Almussafes gave days of glory that, however, have not prevented a bittersweet feeling from flying over now.
The electric car has not just arrived, and with it, the companies' plans have not started either. Ford, without wanting to be too concise, does recognize that it is going to “make decisions” as the market and its customers make the transition to electric vehicles. “We will balance volume with demand while maintaining a focus on costs,” the multinational recently said regarding its Valencia plant, where spirits are beginning to falter.
The UGT-PV union, which leads its works council, is beginning to get worried and has asked the automobile company to comply with the Agreement for Electrification, signed in Germany with opposition from the other unions at the plant. Meanwhile, there is an ERE in process due to a surplus of personnel that seems to be the key to the following process. Because in the new technological paradigm, experts already assume that employment will be clearly affected.
“The perfect storm is occurring: the shortage of semiconductors, the volatility of steel prices, the drop in demand, the breakdown of supply chains and now the pressure of inflation, are taking their toll,” lists Elies Seguí, director of the Chair of Valencian Economics at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
The blank time of the pandemic has also severely penalized, maintains Juanjo Picazo, general secretary of CCOO-PV Industria. “We have to find an explanation for the closures, understand what has happened in the automotive sector. And there we find a year and a half, two years, where the industry and new projects have been paralyzed and this delay has the consequences in the usual automotive cycle,” argues Picazo, who these weeks intermittently closes meetings with the management of Thyssenkrupp. Galmed, the last company to announce a closure in this industry in the Valencian Community.
Before, it was Lear and SAAS, and also the Rhenus Automotive group in Almussafes, which announced an Employment Regulation File for, “exclusively”, the company clarifies, the center in charge of logistics supply. The company, which also operates in Esparreguera and Pedrola (Zaragoza), confirms to La Vanguardia that "it is not closing its doors" in Almussafes and will continue to provide its services at the assembly plant, where it assembles vehicle components.
This Thursday, after threatening to go on strike, the works council reached an agreement and announced that they had managed to ensure that the 118 workers received compensation that was "good, although not what was expected", according to the president of the works council and representative of the workers for the CGT union, Toni Olaya.
The committee directly accused Ford of the situation, alleging that the loss of their jobs occurs to the detriment of the “cheap” labor that the multinational has sought, also in Almussafes, but in special employment centers. They call it a "cancer" for the Almussafes industrial park.
The dependence that the Valencian industry has on Ford is evident. "100%," says Enrique Careaga, CEO of Industrias Alegre. The manager lists the decrease in volumes, the salary increases - "which cannot be passed on to the price of the parts" -, and the investments made to meet maximum demands, as well as the end of production of the Transit model in Almussafes to the year 2024 as reasons why this is a "tremendously complicated" moment.
He believes that this situation means that "only companies with financial lungs or diversified companies with business volume that are not dependent on Ford will be able to endure this period, which will last several years."
That is why in the Generalitat Valenciana we seek to balance those days of glory with those that are already inevitable warnings that something is changing. The Valencian Government actually assumes that the auxiliary automobile industry is “the one that is going to suffer the most”, so they want to help it be “more competitive and prepare it to provide service and products to the new stage, that of the new wave. of the automotive industry,” explains the regional secretary of Industry, Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Felipe Javier Carrasco.
Carrasco considers that the effort should be put into training, “in giving competitive tools to the auxiliary automobile industry, which is really the one that has more than 20,000 jobs and what makes the Valencian Community continue to be a leader in manufacturing in the automotive industry. car". Hence, steps such as the one taken last Thursday, when it was agreed with Thyssenkrupp to form a working group, together with the Department of Education and Employment, to address the technical details directly with the company and “move forward in the search for an agreed solution.” ”.
The Administration is concerned about the ups and downs of the industry, but there is nothing left to do but wait. President Carlos Mazón wanted to be cautious recently when, when asked about Ford, he said that he hoped his plans would come to fruition “as soon as possible.”
The company is delaying the allocation of electric vehicles in Valencia in a changing international context and it has consequences. The manager of the automotive and mobility cluster, AVIA, Jackie Sánchez-Molero, explains that they continue to pay attention to official information with "the hope that there will be new electric models that will revitalize the sector. We are aware that this delay in communications entails uncertainty in the sector,” he points out.
But in that wait, small and medium-sized companies seek to breathe without artifice and look for other formulas. Thus, companies such as Infamol, Nutai, Industrias Ochoa, Weidner Ibérica, IT8 and SPAG, traveled this past week to Mexico together with the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness on a commercial mission to open up to new markets by offering themselves as suppliers of products and engineering services. and innovation. They have begun to work with Mexican companies and with different clusters from other countries looking for possible collaborators. They have opened the door more.
“Automotive auxiliary SMEs have focused on diversification, a sign that they are looking for other niches where they can place their products. Just as it happened in other industries, such as in the textile industry where fabric companies ended up making car interiors, here the opposite process is also taking place due to the volatility of the market,” says Seguí, who has spent four years analyzing the idiosyncrasies of the Valencian economy in different analyzes based on surveys carried out with more than 400 firms in the Valencian Community.
“We have to think about a plan that is competitive for the remaining industry and that will reinforce the automobile industry that is going to come from abroad and that is going to be established here,” defends the regional secretary. The one that remains juggles diversifying and offers itself to new companies, such as PowerCo, which on Friday held its first day with potential suppliers and collaborators, focused on construction services and general services among the members of the Business Confederation of the Community Valencian.
However, it is not yet looking for that auxiliary industry, whose “strength and innovative potential was a differentiating factor for the implementation of the Volkswagen group's battery company,” said the CFO of PowerCo Spain, Javier Rivera. That is why it continues exploring and breathing. One way or the other.
