Renault in 1997, Volkswagen (VW) in 2006, Opel in 2010, Ford in 2014: the list of automobile assembly plant closures and the thousands of job losses they have caused is already long in Belgium. Public authorities and unions now fear that the name Audi will have to be added, while an obvious threat hangs over its Forest-Brussels unit.
The factory, which employs 3,000 people, restarted on April 8, after a two-week shutdown and the announcement of the dismissal of some 400 temporary workers. A subcontractor announced the dismissal of 70 people. A scenario which reminds the company’s oldest members of the episode of 2006, when Volkswagen announced the end of production of the Golf at Forest, transferred to two German sites. Three thousand two hundred jobs were going to be sacrificed, but the factory restarted in 2007 under the banner of Audi, which entrusted it with the production of its A1.
In 2018, manufacturing of this successful model was moved to Spain, but an offer from the Belgian government resulted in Forest being entrusted with the production of an electric vehicle. It would ultimately be the Q8 e-Tron, a high-end SUV.
Mexico and China
Expensive (its price fluctuates between 85,000 and 125,000 euros), meeting less success in Europe than in China and the United States and due to be renewed in 2026, this luxury car will be manufactured in the future in Mexico, and probably also in China. Losing the only model it produces, the Belgian factory is threatened, at best with restructuring, at worst with closure, which would leave Volvo as the only assembly brand still in the kingdom: its Ghent factory, with its 6,500 workers, was entrusted with the production of the new EX30 small SUV, even though Volvo recently established a new unit in Slovakia.
Proof of the importance of the Audi-Forest file for public authorities: the Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, took it up personally and brought together, on Friday April 12, the management of the factory, a German head of strategy of the brand, as well as members of its government and the Brussels, Flemish and Walloon regions. The unions were not invited, the German management of Audi having apparently required participants to sign a confidentiality clause.
By constituting his “task force”, Mr. De Croo hopes to ensure a future for the factory and, perhaps, ensure that it is entrusted with a new model, either from Audi or another brand. of the group (VW, Seat, Cupra, Skoda, Porsche, etc.). In 2023, the Brussels factory had hoped to partly produce the Audi Q4 e-Tron, but German management had put an end to this hope: the sale of other electric models of the group remained stagnant, which allowed the factory German company from Zwickau, in Saxony, to carry out this manufacturing alone.
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