Utilization rate of European factories in 2021
- The year 2021 was even more catastrophic than the year 2020 as far as European car production is concerned, since it still lost 4% of its volume last year while the year 2020 ended in a 25% drop in production in Europe. These successive declines were caused, it should be remembered, by the consequences caused by the coronavirus (in 2020) and by the semiconductor crisis (in 2021). As a result, the utilization rate of European factories continued to decrease in 2021, falling from 83% in 2019 to 63% in 2020 and 60% in 2021. European factories therefore operated at almost half of their capacity last year. This is the lowest figure for twenty years. Given that the production forecasts are not very optimistic for the decade, since Inovev forecasts a volume of no more than 15.4 million units in 2030, (compared to 18.0 million in 2019, 13.4 million in 2020 and 13.0 million in 2021), manufacturers will have every interest in reducing the capacity of their factories or closing several of their factories while maintaining more or less the production capacity of the other existing factories.
- Manufacturers that managed to maintain high plant utilization rates in 2021 were Hyundai-Kia, Geely (Volvo in Europe) and Suzuki. Those that recorded a low utilization rate were Stellantis, Renault-Nissan, Ford and Tata Motors (Jaguar Land-Rover).
- The Vigo plant produced as many vehicles as the Wolfsburg plant in 2021, with the German plant operating at only 55% capacity last year, severely affecting production of the Volkswagen Golf (less of 250,000 copies manufactured).
- By country, France, Poland, Great Britain, Germany and Italy have the lowest utilization rates of their factories in 2021, between 50% and 54% only. The countries which presented the highest rate were Portugal, Hungary, Romania and Sweden, but their production volume remains relatively low compared to the major producing countries.
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