Vehicle assembly at the plant, which has been home to a number of British car makers, is “no longer needed,” said MG. Cars will arrive in the country “fully built ready for distribution”. There will be 25 redundancies, but sales, marketing and after-sales operations will remain at Longbridge, the company said.
Longbridge has seen car manufacturing almost continuously since Herbert Austin set up a production line there in 1906. MG had restarted operations there in 2011 following the demise of Rover in 2005. At its peak, the site covered 400 acres.
MG have been under Chinese ownership since 2005, and experts are saying that this could be the first tangible evidence of foreign companies becoming jittery after the Brexit vote. “Post-Brexit, the costs of imports are much more expensive so costs are higher,” Professor David Bailey of Aston University told the BBC. “What they had hoped to do was to use the UK as a launch pad for selling into Europe. If – big if – we are no longer part of the single market what is the point of investing there?”
The local MP, Labour’s Richard Burden, called the decision “hugely disappointing and premature”, adding that “more discussions should have taken place to explore alternatives and options before any details were finalised.” He said that the government had been happy to meet with MG before the announcement was made in the hope of delaying any closure.
