Audi has given up on finding a buyer for the brand's factory in Brussels, Belgium. Therefore, the factory is now closing permanently. The last 3,000 employees will lose their jobs.
Audi is now closing the brand's factory in Brussels. Despite several rounds of layoffs recently, the factory still employs 3,000 employees. But they all lose their jobs.
The factory that produces Audi's first electric car, the Q8 e-tron, is shutting down production, and Audi has abandoned plans to find buyers who could continue the factory and thus save the jobs.
The attempt to sell the factory to secure some of the positions failed when a potential buyer withdrew permanently.
– In the end, nothing happened. The possible buyer announced last week that they are not interested in the Audi Brussels factory after all," says Ronny Liedts from the trade union ACV-Metea to the media VRT .
The factory closure means that the employees face layoffs and that production will be moved to Mexico.
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Audi has decided to stop the production of electric cars in Brussels, marking the end of an era for the employees and the factory itself. Thus, there is only one car factory left in Belgium. Namely Volvos outside the city of Ghent.
During the autumn there has been unrest among the workers at the factory. Among other things, a number of employees stole some for 200 new cars, which were stored at the factory in protest.
There is also no indication that Audi's factory workers in Belgium will continue to work towards the factory closure now that they have the prospect of unemployment.
– We cannot guarantee that we will continue to work. At the moment the sub-suppliers are on strike. So people can't work here either," Liedts tells VRT.
In general, Audi is a car brand under pressure. The latest rumor is that the brand is on its way out of the Formula 1 agreement, which would otherwise send the brand out on the starting grid in 2026. Read more about it here.
At sister brand Volkswagen, if possible, you are under even more pressure due to a bad economy. The brand's finance director believes that there are two to three years at the most to reverse the economic development in Wolfsburg. For the same reason, more factory closures in Germany may become necessary, Volkswagen believes.
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