Ford Cancels Investment in Wales; Unreliability Cited

Ford Motor Co. canceled plans Monday to invest $365 million in car engine plants in Wales and said it would instead opt to spend the money in West Germany because British workers and weather are unreliable.

The announcement was greeted with disappointment by both union workers and management at the two plants in Bridgend and Swansea, where about 3,000 jobs were to have been created under the plan to eventually build more than half of Ford’s European-made engines in Britain.

A statement by Ford cited “the unreliability of supply from British plants” as a main reason in its decision not to proceed with the investment. Three other Ford facilities have been disrupted by industrial disputes in which workers demanded more money and reduced work hours.

The U.S. automobile giant has already spent $810 million on the two plants in south Wales, which will annually produce about 550,000 engines by the beginning of next year.

The second phase of the investment, which is intended to boost the annual capacity by another 300,000 units by 1993, will now be spent on the Cologne Ford plant in West Germany, Ford executives said.

“In Britain we have supply difficulties that in the past have had an effect on our continental plants,” a spokesman said.

“We are also hit by the weather,” he said. “We have had created engines waiting on the docks at (the port city of) Dover because the sea is so bad, and this has hit production elsewhere.”