[A-List] UK eurozone membership: Nissan

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Sunderland plant at risk if UK stays outside euro, says Nissan
By Michael Harrison, Business Editor
The Independent, 08 October 2002

The Japanese car maker Nissan yesterday issued its clearest warning yet that
it would review the future of its Sunderland assembly plant unless Britain
joins the euro.

Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's president, said this was not a threat but a
"reality", adding that the company had to be able to make cars at a profit.

The Sunderland plant won a reprieve two years ago when Nissan decided to
build the new Micra there rather than in France after nearly a year of
soul-searching.

Sunderland was eventually chosen because of its productivity record, even
though the Japanese company was worried about having a cost base in pounds
when the plant earns most of its revenues in euros.

"When the next investments come in the next couple of years, we hope we
don't have to go through the same kind of analysis," Mr Ghosn said in an
interview with BBC News Online. "Obviously, that's not our decision. It's
the decision of the UK government. That's why it's our duty to express our
difficulties and our hopes and let them make the decisions."

Nissan has invested £1.5bn on the Sunderland plant, which has a workforce of
5,000. Asked whether he was threatening to switch production and jobs
abroad, Mr Ghosn said: "No, it's a reality. It's not a question of a threat,
it's a reality that we will take this into consideration each time we have
to make an investment."

His comments were seized upon by the pro-euro lobby as evidence of the
damage being done to British industry by staying outside the single European
currency. Simon Buckby, campaign director of Britain in Europe, said: "This
is a thinly veiled warning that if Britain says 'no' to the euro, foreign
investors will say 'no' to Britain. Firms such as Nissan are hanging on here
in the hope that we will join. Others, such as Black & Decker and Massey
Ferguson, have already found the costs of isolation too much to bear,
Britain cannot afford to ignore these warnings."

Sir Ken Jackson, the pro-euro joint general secretary of the AEEU-Amicus
union, said: "Nissan's remarks underline the risk to British jobs of
continued UK exclusion from eurozone membership. People must be in no doubt
that if the anti-Europeans have their way it will be a disaster for the UK
export economy and working people in this country."