{"id":11080,"date":"2018-04-04T15:49:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T15:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=11080"},"modified":"2018-05-11T08:03:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T08:03:54","slug":"van-hire-fave-vauxhall-delivers-brexit-win-with-luton-factory-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/11080","title":{"rendered":"Van hire fave Vauxhall delivers Brexit win with Luton factory upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PSA\/Vauxhall

The existing Vauxhall Vivaro plant at Luton will be expanded to produce 100,000 vehicles per year by mid-2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

The UK’s uncertain progress towards Brexit has left many of our homegrown automotive businesses concerned about the future.<\/p>\n

But the new owner of Vauxhall and its European sibling Opel plans to increase<\/em> investment in the group’s Luton plant in order to increase LCV production capacity from 60,000 to 100,000 vehicles per year by mid-2019.<\/p>\n

The factory is currently the home of the Vauxhall Vivaro, the only volume-manufactured van that’s still built in the UK<\/a>.\u00a0 Many van hire firms and operators<\/a> like to buy British, so it’s good news that the choice of UK-built vans is likely to\u00a0increase<\/em> following the changes to this plant.<\/p>\n

More new vans built in UK<\/h2>\n

French firm PSA Group plans to invest in the Luton plant to enable it to build LCVs based on the firm’s EMP2 (Efficient Modular Platform) vehicle platform.\u00a0Vans already based on this platform include the\u00a0Citro\u00ebn Berlingo<\/a>, Vauxhall\/Opel Combo<\/a>,\u00a0Peugeot Expert<\/a> and Toyota ProAce<\/a>, plus various passenger derivatives of these vans.<\/p>\n

EMP2 is a core part of the PSA product lineup and is also used for a number of popular Peugeot and Citro\u00ebn\u00a0cars including the Peugeot 308, 408, 3008 and 5008 and the Citro\u00ebn C4 Picasso, C5, DS7.<\/p>\n

The end of the Vivaro as we know it?<\/h2>\n

Today’s press release said the group was targeting\u00a0“100,000 vehicles per year based on PSA Group’s EMP2 platform”<\/em>. At present, that doesn’t include the Vivaro, which has historically been\u00a0a joint venture between Opel\/Vauxhall, Renault and Nissan.<\/p>\n

However, reports suggest that the next-generation Vivaro will be built on the\u00a0EMP2 platform. This should secure future production of the Vivaro at the Luton plant, maintaining its long history as “the home of the Vivaro”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A coup for Luton?<\/h2>\n

Overall, this news seems to be a coup for the Luton plant. I believe it should guarantee the factory’s future for some years to come.<\/p>\n

PSA says that the group’s proven expertise at building vans and its existing paint shop helped swing the deal. A\u00a0“responsible social dialogue”<\/em> with the Unite union is also said to have guaranteed\u00a0“production flexibility”<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vauxhall and Opel owner PSA Group has said that it will increase the capacity of the Vauxhall Vivaro plant at Luton from 60,000 to 100,000 vans per year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[126,119,1288],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11080"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11200,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080\/revisions\/11200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}