However, the officials of the carmaker continue to talk about the day when Ford finally assembles 200,000 cars or more in Romania as it initially intended to when it bought the plant.
“Ford will expand the plant with a second model, and when that happens, we will have to hire people as we will work in two or three shifts,” said Jan Gijsen, the president of Ford Romania, who directly supervises the operations of the plant in Craiova.
Ford will need skilled personnel for that and will hire from among the future students of the University of Craiova, which is why the company created scholarships for them in the first place. Ford is now working with the university on the curriculum the students will study to improve it and adjust it to its needs, but the education students will receive will enable them to work for any carmaker, not just Ford, he added.
The Ford site in Craiova is currently employing about 4,000 people, more than 3,500 of which directly employed by Ford Romania, 2,500 of them in the car plant and 1,000 in the engine plant.
Since arrival in Craiova in March 2008, Ford has hired 700 people, while others left on their own or retired. Automobile Craiova had 3,900 employees at the time of its privatization.
It is hard to discuss the number of employees, but the company has an installed manufacturing capacity of 300,000 cars a year. With a second model added, production will go up to 150,000 to 200,000 cars a year or more, depending on the model assembled, because the company has not made a decision yet, the Ford official said.
At more than 200,000 cars a year, the plant will need to work in two or maybe two and half shifts. The same happened with the engine plant, which started with one engine and one shift and is now making two engines in three shifts, he added.
Although Gijsen talked about a production increase and about the impact of a second model, he did not say when that would happen, explaining he was not allowed to comment on it because it was something that had to do with Ford’s strategy.
Production in Craiova could increase by adding the EcoSport, the small SUV model of Ford, which is already assembled in Brazil and India or the new Ford KA unveiled last December and set for launch in Europe by 2017. If EcoSport sales go beyond 60,000 units in Europe, Ford might consider relocating production to the continent to cut costs, but the model has only sold several thousand units in its first few months on the market.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)