Around 500 jobs are to be created by Honda at its Swindon plant ahead of it exporting its top-selling Civic 5-door model to the US next summer, the car giant revealed this morning.
The jobs boost follows the announcement in March of a £200m upgrade of the plant to make it the global manufacturing centre for the next-generation Civic.
Honda of the UK Manufacturing (HUM) – the arm of the Japanese group that operates the Swindon plant – said 150 people are expected to be hired between now and Christmas, with another 350 recruited by the spring. All new workers will be given fixed-term two-year contracts.
The new jobs will take the workforce at the plant to around 3,750 – its highest for more than two years.
HUM director Jason Smith said today: “This news demonstrates Honda’s long term commitment to HUM. To support the production of the all-new Civic, we are aiming to recruit 150 new starters by the end of 2015 and a further 350 in 2016 which is good news for HUM and for Swindon.”
Today’s announcement is the latest in a flurry of good news from Honda's Swindon plant after several years of job losses and production cut backs.
The £200m investment announced in March was hailed as securing the future of the plant after it had been hit hard by a slump in demand.
Then in July bosses said output at the plant was slowly rising again as they unveiled its latest model, the high-performance Civic Type R.
Honda, which has made cars in Swindon since 1992, said the launch of the Type R – described as the fastest front-wheel drive car on the planet – had created “a halo effect” around the plant with a new sense of optimism. That was quickly followed by news that the Type R would sold in the car manufacturer’s home country Japan.
It was a different picture 18 months ago when Honda announced plans to axe nearly 500 jobs at the plant, close one of its two production lines and reduce daily shifts from three to two as European sales continued to go into reverse. That blow came a year after nearly 600 jobs were axed as the plant struggled against the global car sales downturn.
The plant makes the CR-V sports utility vehicle as well as the Civic 5-door, Civic Tourer and new Type R. CR-V production is to be moved to a sister factory in Canada within the next couple of years.
While the plant has the capacity to build 250,000 cars a year, it produced just 120,000 last year. Production plummeted from 230,000 in 2008 to 97,000 in 2011 as the global slowdown took its toll. Honda expects output to rise slowly over the next few years although the mothballed production line will remain closed.
Honda has invested £2.2bn in n HUM since it opened as a pre-delivery inspection site in 1985.
