Volcanic ash drives taxi sales down
1 min read
Manganese Bronze Holdings, the leading manufacturer of the distinctive London taxi, has announced that sales have been particularly disappointing having been affected by lower earnings for taxi drivers from the Icelandic volcanic ash fallout with airports being closed.
The company said that the end of the Government's scrappage scheme from the end of March and the introduction of the new showroom tax which had added almost £350 to the cost of a vehicle from April 1st.
However, Manganese Bronze said that its Chinese manufacturing partner Shanghai LTI (SLTI) had won funding for international sales that should help to achieve a planned level of international sales of 1,000 vehicles a year.
In March, the company announced that it would cease the manufacture of taxis at its Coventry plant this year, resulting in 60 manufacturing operations redundancies. The redundancies will cost around £0.8 million and, in addition, tooling and presses for the current TX4 model will be written off at a cost of £2.7 million. In future, Manganese Bronze will import a kit of bodies and panels from SLTI for assembly in Coventry into a ready-for-sale TX4. The cost saving from implementation of the change in operation is expected to be £4 million a year.
