The Supervisory Board of the German car manufacturer Continental has approved a restructuring plan that is expected to affect around 30.000 jobs worldwide.
On September 1, Continental announced plans to cut costs by more than one billion euros a year by 2023 and expand a restructuring program that could affect up to 30.000 jobs worldwide.
CEO of Continental, Elmar Degenhart, said the Continental plant in Aachen, western Germany, will be the tenth tire plant in Western Europe to close by 2025.
This is because, in the last decade, Asian companies have built production capacities in Eastern Europe for about 50 million tires, even though the market has stagnated.
”So far we have been able to cope with these developments, but now we have reached the point where the overcapacity in Western Europe is between 13 and 15 million passenger car tires,” said Degenhart for Bloomberg.
The group’s German operations would be severely hit, with 13.000 jobs being relocated or cut. The Continental Group has approximately 232.000 employees worldwide, of which 59.000 in Germany.
