It was the last French assembly unit of Stellantis without the production of an electric vehicle, the Rennes La Janais factory (Ille-et-Vilaine) produced on November 13 the first battery-powered example of the Citroën C5 New generation Aircross, in pre-production version. Its concept was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in mid-October. The launch of mass production of the vehicle, which abandons its current EMP2 platform inherited from PSA to embrace the “STLA Medium” multi-energy platform, is expected from July 2025.
It is in this context that the group’s big boss, Carlos Tavares, was on site Monday, November 18. The opportunity to promote the industrial launch of this vehicle to the press, the advantages of which he praised: “I think it’s a pretty remarkable car, particularly in terms of comfort, with good road feel and good roominess, particularly at the rear. It’s a real Citroën with great modernity. We can hope that she finds her clients.”
Crucial commercial success for the Rennes factory
Commercial success is important, both for Citroën in search of market share and for the Rennes site, of which the C5 Aircross is the only model in production. Carlos Tavares knows this and hopes to manufacture between 50,000 and 80,000 vehicles per year. “Activity in this factory depends on the commercial success of the C5 Aircross. Will she be successful? I hope so, but we don’t know.” he conceded to the press, while praising the flexibility brought by the new multi-energy platform, capable of accommodating thermal, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric powertrains. “It’s great security” for the site, believes the general director, especially in a sluggish European automobile market where electric is struggling to take off.
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Not enough to reassure the 1,800 employees of the factory, whose union organizations have been campaigning fiercely for several years for a second silhouette to be assigned to them. This is not in the plans currently even if it “may be other opportunities”, once again underlined Carlos Tavares, while most of the vehicles on the “STLA M” platform were dispatched to the group’s factories in Sochaux (Doubs), Italy and Germany. While this news is not reassuring for workers whose average age is 52, “we can’t launch two cars at the same time, so first we have to concentrate on successfully launching the first one,” comments Didier Picard, CFE-CGC union representative on the site, 35 years in the business.
To prepare for the arrival of the new model, the coming months are, however, set to be marked by recourse to partial unemployment, with a decline in the manufacturing of the current model from January 6 and the transition to operation with a team and a half into a simple team, leading to the elimination of around 250 temporary positions. Stellantis assures that this situation is only temporary and that the return to 2X8 will arrive in the second half of 2025, probably in September. The most optimistic unions even hope for a third team at the end of 2025… but here again, commercial success will be the key indicator to scrutinize. If the plan goes smoothly, the factory – like all of Stellantis’ French sites – is guaranteed to have work until 2028.
The good news is that the time for competitiveness agreements to save the site seems far away. “The Rennes factory is a great example of flexibility and understanding of what an efficient factory is. If she hadn’t taken responsibility for her own transformation, we wouldn’t be here today to talk about it.” said Carlos Tavares, praising the performance in quality and cost of an industrial site which has transformed over the last ten years. “We do the job as they say, there is a collective commitment,” completes Laurent Valy, elected CFDT.
From 224 to 113 hectares
The immense industrial complex has been largely compacted over the last ten years. From 224 hectares in 2015, it has been reduced to 113 hectares today. Objective: to go down to 108. To ensure its performance, Stellantis has made 160 million euros of investment since 2022. In addition to a new battery assembly workshop, a 40,000 m² shoeing workshop, where the 950 sub-assemblies are assembled which form a box in white, was created in the direct vicinity of the assembly line. Equipped with 469 welding robots, its creation makes it possible to produce more than 90% of the vehicle’s central parts internally, compared to around 70% in the past.
Another new feature: a plastic injection workshop is being installed in a 20,000 m² space. A first in France for Stellantis. By mid-November 2024, three of the six planned presses are installed and begin producing door sill protections, bumpers and fender flares for the new Citroën C5 Aircross. These parts were in the past outsourced to suppliers. Stellantis today finds an economic interest in reinternalizing production by promoting the know-how of the former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group, which makes it possible to give work to its employees while improving logistics and CO2 emissions linked to the manufacture of a vehicle.
Stellantis has also tried as much as possible to reduce the costs of these investments. “It’s important not to have to invest in new tools, explains Jacques Bliard, responsible for industrialization. The injection presses come from the Melfi factory in Italy and a little over 300 shoeing robots were recovered from Sochaux when production of the previous Peugeot 3008 ended. And these two examples will undoubtedly not remain the only ones. “We have no shortage of ideas to implement,” said Carlos Tavares, always looking for solutions to reduce production costs in the face of Chinese competition, in particular.
No site closure in France within three years
The general director continued his tour of French factories in Rennes, a few weeks after visiting the historic Sochaux factory (Doubs) at the beginning of October, where Peugeot’s new 3008 and 5008 are manufactured. His time in the factories is also a way for him to reassure the production teams, while doubt hangs over the future of all of the group’s European factories in a moribund market. In Ile-de-France, uncertainty over the fate of the Poissy factory is regularly cited. The automobile group must, like every year at this time, present on November 26 to its union organizations a three-year activity plan for each industrial site.
“For the five assembly plants, we have a precise industrial plan and over the next three years, we have no specific announcement at this stage to make to you on the future of this or that factory”declared on November 6 as an introduction Jean-Philippe Imparato, interviewed by the Economic Affairs Commission of the National Assembly. The director for wider Europe of Stellantis also assured that the manufacturer would be “at the end of 2024 a production capacity of one million cars” in France and that this capacity would be maintained “within three years”. On paper, no doubt. But it seems complex in reality for Stellantis to achieve such production figures. According to its own production forecasts in France dating from the beginning of 2024, the company plans to produce around 800,000 vehicles in 2025.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
