World-class Nissan workers ‘key to electric car deal’ (From The Northern Echo)

World-class Nissan workers ‘key to electric car deal’

8:08am Friday 19th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

THE world-class reputation of Nissan’s North-East workforce was last night credited with securing a jobs bonanza for the region.

An “elated” Trevor Mann, Nissan’s senior vice-president for manufacturing in Europe, said his “excellent” workforce in Sunderland was a key factor in winning production of the Leaf electric car.

He also credited the Government and regional agencies such as One North East for “getting on with” introducing infrastructure for the vehicles and financial incentives to buy them as important factors.

On the day Nissan officially announced Leaf would be built at Sunderland, Mr Mann said: “We have an excellent workforce that has been committed to the company and self-motivated for as long as we have been around.

“There are a lot of emotional positives for Nissan in Sunderland.

You can’t make business decisions on emotion, but they are underlying factors – a workforce who do what they say.

“We know why we were chosen and it comes down to a very few factors.

“One is that we delivered the most competitive cost and secondly, which is really just as important when you are introducing new technology into the market, we have a high level of engineering expertise.”

The contract secures more than 2,000 jobs at the plant and in the supply chain.

It should also see a total investment of nearly £640m in electric vehicle production at the Sunderland plant.

But just as importantly it puts the region at the centre of the global low carbon vehicle market.

In the past 51 weeks, as well as the Leaf, the region has been awarded Nissan’s new electric car battery plant, announced funding for a national training centre for low carbon vehicles, outlined plans for an open access test track, unveiled proposals for a research and development centre for low carbon vehicles and won funding for 1,300 vehicle charging points. One North-East chairman Margaret Fay believes that other companies could be attracted to the region because of its low carbon vehicle infrastructure, which now “ticks every box”.

Experts last night predicted that the low carbon vehicle industry could potentially bring thousands of jobs to the region in years to come.

Minister for the North-East Nick Brown, who said he would be buying a Leaf, described yesterday’s announcement as the biggest for the region since Nissan opened its plant here in 1984.