The automotive supplier Prevent is fighting with the VW group – now the Bosnian owners have apparently found a new lever. The employees of a Saarbrücken factory get caught between the fronts.
Headquarters of Prevent
Wednesday, 30.05.2018
08:05 clock
The dispute between the automotive supplier Prevent and the car giant Volkswagen has been smoldering for a long time. In 2016, the conflict made headlines nationwide: The Bosnian owners of Prevent ordered a stop of supply from their German factories to VW – and thus temporarily put a stop to the carmaker’s production.
The reason was disputes over the distribution of costs of an investment in Brazil. For a long time, it looked as if VW would eventually gain the upper hand: the group – the world’s number one car manufacturer – announced in the spring of cooperation with Prevent.
But the owners behind the supply conglomerate – the Hastor family from Bosnia – have got a new means of pressure in their hands: the foundry Neue Halberg Guss in Saarbrücken. Prevent took over this company only a few months ago, through Prevent’s Castanea Rubra Assets GmbH.
Prevent wants up to 180 million more
Halberg Guss manufactures crankcases, cylinder heads and crankshafts – parts that Volkswagen obviously can not get anywhere else fast. Prevent uses this as before for extremely high price demands. In the discussion are surcharges up to the factor 10 on the agreed level as “Auflaufpreise”. This is clear from a letter from Volkswagen to Barbaros Arslan, Managing Director of Neue Halberg Guss. The letter is available to the news agency dpa.
According to this, the company is demanding 150 to 180 million more euros in the second quarter of the year alone. VW does not comment on the letter: “We do not comment on internal documents.”
The history of the conflict is complicated: In 2016, Prevent made the Wolfsburg car giant look pretty bad. In the dispute over a major order that had been canceled, two German subsidiaries of the Bosnian Prevent Group temporarily stopped deliveries to the Volkswagen Group in August. For days therefore stood in the VW plants in Wolfsburg and Emden tapes quiet.
Ultimately, VW and Prevent agreed in weeks of negotiations on new supply contracts. Ostensibly, the Prevent group and its daughters won the dispute at that time. In the spring of 2018 then VW had the muscles and announced the cooperation completely.
The union is sounding the alarm
The fierce supplier Zoff is said to have cost VW a significant three-digit million amount in 2016 – because the Wolfsburg had previously overlooked an important detail. The Prevent group had cleverly incorporated the small metal casting specialist ES Automobilguss and thus bought a powerful negotiating position. When VW wanted to sort out another Prevent subsidiary after a long cooperation, Prevent used this power to the full extent, to the surprise of Volkswagen.
A similar maneuver seems to try the owner family Hastor again. However, the workforce of the Saarbrücken foundry threatens to get caught between the fronts. The company employs about 1,500 people in Saarbrücken and 600 in Leipzig. Patrick Selzer of IG Metall warns that there is great concern among the employees.
In fact, Prevent is also in trouble with Daimler, another important customer of Neue Halberg Guss. Should VW and Daimler break away as customers, production volumes of 140,000 to 150,000 tonnes were missing.
What this can lead to is shown by the fate of the other German Prevent subsidiaries: They have some in mind Weeks of notice and short-time work announced,