Aston Martin has confirmed that it will lay off 95 full-time workers at its new DBX production facility in St Athan, Wales.
The job cuts form part of a previously announced downsizing strategy that will see the firm make 500 lay-offs and cut operating costs by £10 million as part of a plan to return to profitability.
An unspecified number of contractors at the St Athan plant, reported by Wales Online to be in excess of 100, will also be released.
The St Athan facility only began full-scale series production in summer last year, but Aston is now aiming to bring its cost base in line with reduced production levels of its sports car lines. More recently, the firm announced that its sales dropped 32% in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, contributing to an overall operating loss of £323m.
New CEO Tobias Moers plans to leverage the firm's extended relationship with Mercedes-AMG to accelerate Aston's electrification ambitions, with a hybrid version of the Aston Martin DBX due to arrive later this year, and a new AMG-engined version of the Valhalla supercar set to be shown in the coming months.
It has also recently emerged that Aston Martin will build its first pure-electric models - an SUV and a 'front-engined' sports car - in the UK, rather than Germany. The former will be built at St Athan and the latter at the firm's existing headquarters in Gaydon.
An official statement released by the brand read: "Aston Martin moves into a new era, with new investment and a new business plan to position the company for success, and to operate as a self-sustaining business in the near future.
"In order to secure the future of its Gaydon and St Athan manufacturing facilities, Aston Martin continues to execute on actions to improve the cost efficiency of the business, in alignment with its transformation plan. 'Project Horizon' has been launched to revitalise its products and deliver a level of operational excellence, agility and efficiency throughout every aspect of the organisation.
"Aston Martin has issued an HR1 [notification of more than 20 redundancies] for its St Athan facility and has launched an employee and trade union consultation process."
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Are there any Supercar makers who do everything in-house, own engine, makes all the parts themselves?, I doubt it, Aston Martin like Bentley and Rolls Royce and Jaguar if you like are Britain's old revered brands, but they've been swallowed up whole, nothing on or in them isn't wholly own brand, it's bought in for various reasons,cost mainly, time saving etc.
Last time they stated how many pre-orders they had it was 1,800, with 1,200 of those being customer specified. By that I assume the other 600 were going in to dealer forecourts. Assuming they have sold more on pre-order since then, although they have not said how many.
The 1171 units shipped would be about half the preorders then. If the order books were full I doubt they would be laying off people. With the debt level this is not much of a saving either.
DBX sales not good then? Wonder why.
Perhaps if they sacked Reichman and got a competent designer they wouldn't have this problem with successive designs from him?
Just saying...
£1.5 milion supercar with a crate engine from Mercedes? Valhalla is not the car which was promised. I would get my deposit back if I had placed one.
You're a bit obsessed.
At least I care enough about Aston to say what needs to be said.
Again and again and again...
I do agree with you about the DB11 and Vantage by the way. Neither looks appealing to me. But I don't think styling is the issue with the DBX... these SUVs are not my thing at all, but the Aston Martin certainly doesn't look as revolting as many of them.
What I've said about the DBX is that it is not the worst that Reichman has done, but if it was given the once over by a competent designer to finish it off it would be far better.
I do not think it would take much to fix it, and you have compare to Callum's other works at Jaguar. F-Pace, I-Pace, E-Pace, all work as SUVs. And the new interior of the F-Pace is sublime. The DBX has to be better than that, yet it isn't.
The new F-Pace SVR is what I'd have before the DBX, and I'd have a Land Rover Defender with the change. Yet, the F-Pace is in two segments below, below Range Rovers. I'd have the Range Rover Sport SVR before the DBX.