Production on the coast: Fewer cars roll off the assembly line in Emden than management and the works council would like.
Image: dpa
Many of the Group’s locations are looking to the future with growing concern. Vehicles are missing from the main plant in Wolfsburg to factories in Eastern Europe. The problems go far beyond the core VW brand.
Hopes were high when the employee representatives at Volkswagen in Emden announced their outlook for 2023 a few months ago. The factory in the East Frisian port city, just a few minutes’ walk from the banks of the Ems estuary, had a dry spell behind it. Only 146,000 cars rolled off the assembly line last year, half as many as the systems can handle. Now the head of the works council, Manfred Wulff, wanted to spread optimism – and promised an increase of 100,000 vehicles. Wrong thinking, as becomes apparent in the middle of the year: production is increasing, but not nearly as much as hoped. There is still a big gap between the capacity limit and the actual number of items.
At other locations of Europe’s largest car company, VW, the problems are even more serious. From the Wolfsburg main plant to the factories in Eastern Europe, workforces are looking at capacity utilization with growing concern, as research by the F.A.Z. show. Things are going better than last year because a large backlog of vehicles can be reduced, for which more control chips are available again. The problem: not enough new orders follow. Customers are increasingly holding onto their money during the recession. “We live from the order backlog, but there is an end in sight,” says a VW manager. Instead of growth, the signs point to years of sideways movement with growing pressure on margins.