Vauxhall built 44,657 Vivaro vans at Luton in 2013 — more than half of all commercial vehicles manufactured in the UK last year.
Despite the 14.7% rise in commercial vehicle registrations last year, British commercial vehicle manufacturers had a fairly dire year, producing 21.7% fewer vehicles than in 2012.
In total, 87,671 commercial vehicles (vans and trucks) were produced in 2013, down from 112,039 in 2012.
However, things would have been far worse without UK van stalwart Vauxhall, which produced 44,657 Vivaro vans at its Luton plant last year — more than half the UK’s total commercial vehicle output.
Vauxhall has stayed loyal to the UK, despite the departure of Ford for Turkish shores last summer, and the new model Vivaro, which is due to be introduced later this year, will also be made at Luton.
It’s the twelfth consecutive year that Vauxhall has been the UK’s biggest van manufacturer, and the firm has already invested more than €200m in preparing to manufacturer the new model Vivaro at Luton, where it employs 1,200 people directly.
Commenting on the figures for the UK CV manufacturing industry as a whole, Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said:
“Production of commercial vehicles struggled in 2013, due to restructuring of manufacturing operations and difficult economic conditions across Europe. With early signs of recovery on the continent and better performance in the truck and bus sectors, there are reasons to be positive, but we expect overall volumes to remain subdued for some months yet.”
The final month of 2013 saw a 25% fall in CV manufacturing output, and the European weakness referred to by Mr Hawes was evident in the year-long figures, which showed a 24.8% drop in export demand for UK-made CVs:
| CV manufacturing | Dec-12 | Dec-13 | % Change | YTD-12 | YTD-13 | % Change |
| Total | 6,851 | 5,136 | -25.0% | 112,039 | 87,671 | -21.7% |
| Home | 3,301 | 1,014 | -69.3% | 48,306 | 39,761 | -17.7% |
| Export | 3,550 | 4,122 | 16.1% | 63,733 | 47,910 | -24.8% |
| % export | 51.8% | 80.3% | 56.9% | 54.6% |
Data courtesy of SMMT (www.smmt.co.uk)
However, perhaps the simplest way to see what’s changed is to take a look at this graph, which shows UK CV output since 2007:
UK CV output 2007 – 2013
It’s pretty clear that even if the UK population likes UK-built cars (and it does), it isn’t so keen on UK-built CVs.
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