As investment stalls, auto industry warns PM May: Avert
a Brexit car crash
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[June 26, 2018]
By Sarah Young and Guy Faulconbridge
LONDON (Reuters) - Uncertainty over Brexit
has halved new investment in the British car industry and Prime Minister
Theresa May should urgently change tack to keep the world's fifth
largest economy in the EU's customs union, the country's main car lobby
group said.
Public announcements of fresh investments into new plant, machinery,
models and model development fell to 347.3 million pounds ($461.1
million) between January and June 21, down from 647.4 million pounds in
the first half of 2017.
"There is growing frustration in global boardrooms at the slow pace of (Brexit)
negotiations," said Mike Hawes, head of the Society of Motor
Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
"Government must rethink its position on the customs union," Hawes said,
referring to May's position that Britain will leave the customs union
which groups EU members in a duty-free area where there is a common
import tariff for non-EU goods.

With only nine months left until Britain is due to leave the EU, there
is little clarity about how trade will flow as May, who is grappling
with a rebellion in her party, is still trying to strike a deal with the
bloc.
In a sign of just how worried big business is getting, Siemens <SIEGn.DE>,
Airbus <AIR.PA> and BMW <BMWG.DE> have publicly cautioned Britain in the
past week that their businesses will be hurt by a disorderly Brexit.
When asked about business worries by ambassadors, British Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson was reported by The Daily Telegraph newspaper to
have quipped: "F*** business". A spokesman disputed that he had used bad
language.
CLIFF EDGE BREXIT?
Under the current timetable, both London and Brussels hope to get a
final Brexit deal in October to give enough time to ratify it by Brexit
day in March 2019, though few diplomats expect the deal to be struck
until months later.
The nature of the future relationship with the world's biggest trading
bloc remains unclear and there is deep concern in boardrooms about the
prospect of Britain crashing out of the bloc without a deal, or with a
deal that would silt up the arteries of trade.
That could be highly damaging for an industry which is dependent on the
speedy movement of huge numbers of parts across borders. The average
car, for example, has about 30,000 parts.
BMW's Mini plant in Oxford brings in five million components a day and
the company is increasingly frustrated about the lack of clarity around
how it will be able to do that in future.
The car manufacturer's UK boss, Ian Robertson, told Reuters that if
Britain tumbled out of the EU without a deal on March 29 there was no
longer enough time to put in place the systems to ensure components
could keep moving easily across borders.
"What we are asking for is negotiations to take place, decisions to be
made, clarity to be achieved and then we can plan our business model
accordingly," Robertson said on the sidelines of the SMMT conference.
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A worker is seen completing final checks on the production line at
Nissan car plant in Sunderland, northern England, June 24, 2010.
REUTERS/Nigel Roddis/File Photo

BMW has quietly ramped up production capacity at a new export hub for the Mini
on continental Europe with Dutch contract manufacturer VDL Nedcar, thereby
cutting its dependency on Oxford.
It quadrupled staffing in Born, the Netherlands where the Mini is also built,
and added the assembly of BMW's X1 model to the Dutch production line in August
last year. More people now work at VDL Nedcar than BMW employs at its plant in
Oxford.
Even a small increase in paperwork or customs checks after Brexit, for example,
could lead to spiraling costs for big manufacturers which depend on vast supply
chains that stretch across Europe and the globe.
At stake is the future of one of Britain's few manufacturing success stories
since the 1980s: a car industry employing over 800,000 people and generating
turnover of $110 billion. Much of the industry is owned by foreign companies.
The world's biggest carmakers including Toyota <7203.T>, BMW and Ford <F.N> have
urged Britain to ensure that they can import and export without hindrance after
Brexit.
One British manufacturer is McLaren Automotive, which produces about 5,000
high-end cars a year. Its chief executive Mike Flewitt said the industry needed
to know the shape of the new trading relationship in good time.
"The thing we plea for most is time, is notice," Flewitt said. "If we don’t know
what's coming then we just run into a brick wall."
SHORT-TERM PAIN
Supporters of Brexit admit there may be some short-term pain for Britain's $2.9
trillion economy, but that long-term it will prosper when cut free from the EU
which they cast as a failing German-dominated experiment in European
integration.
Around 52 percent of Britain's total $1.1 trillion trade in goods last year was
with the EU so May wants to sign a free trade agreement and negotiate an as yet
relatively undefined customs arrangement to ensure as frictionless trade as
possible.

SMMT chief Hawes said the British government's current position - leaving the EU
single market and the customs union - would hurt the industry.
"The current position, with conflicting messages and red lines goes directly
against the interests of the UK automotive sector which has thrived on single
market and customs union membership," he said.
($1 = 0.7532 pounds)
(Additional reporting by Edward Taylor; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by
Keith Weir, Mark Potter and Alexandra Hudson)
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