Honda has announced further plans to cut back on its manufacturing operations in Britain, claiming sales in Europe didn't meet company expectations last year, along with the fact they don't see sales increasing significantly within the next couple of years either, according to a report by Reuters.
Honda Motor Europe confirmed a plan to move from a three to two shift pattern at its Swindon manufacturing plant in southwest England this week, resulting in over 340 job losses, according to Reuters.
The change also means the plant will now produce about 120,000 vehicles in 2014 at Swindon, a 15 percent decrease compared to the 140,094 vehicles produced in 2013.
Ian Howells, senior vice president of Honda Motor Europe, said the automaker has not experienced the growth they had expected over the last year.
"With no increase forecasted for the next couple of years, we must scale our manufacturing activity accordingly," Howells said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Howell added that Honda is "confident" in the long-term future of the Swindon plant after the restructuring.
Over 800 employees were fired in 2013, according to Reuters.
The automaker has been making cars at Swindon since 1992, building vehicles like the Civic, Civic Tourer, CR-V and Jazz for the British and European markets.
Swindon has the capacity to make over 250,000 vehicles annually.
Thanks to a demand in countries like Italy, Portugal and Greece, industry figures for January showed European car sales increased 5.2 percent, according to Reuters.
UK car registrations increased 10.8 percent on 2012 to 2.26 million vehicles, its best year since 2007.
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