- Bratislava Volkswagen produced almost 270,000 cars last year – 40,000 less than the year before.
- However, he achieved higher sales and profits thanks to the fact that the share of more expensive SUVs increased.
The largest private employer in Slovakia has felt what can happen if supply chains are broken. Bratislava Volkswagen produced 268,685 cars last year, which is approximately 40,000 less than the year before, but it was more troubled by production downtime than demand.
Not only the often-mentioned chip crisis, but also fluctuations in the supply of other components, such as cable bundles from Ukraine, contributed to this. Lockdowns in China also caused problems.
Downtime usually costs car companies additional costs, for example for parking vehicles or their later reassembly and addition of a missing component. This may also be one of the reasons why Volkswagen had around 600 regular employees at the end of 2022 compared to the year before (11,500 employees in 2021). However, if such a large company as VW just stops filling the positions that become vacant through the natural departure of people, then this can already affect the number of employees
“Last year, we really recruited in a very restrictive way,” said Oliver Grünberg, chairman of the board and member of the board of directors for the technical area at Volkswagen Slovakia.
“During the last year, we replaced the natural fluctuation only partially, which caused a slight decrease in the number of employees. This year, we plan to hire hundreds of new employees in connection with the launch of new generations of VW Passat and Škoda Superb models and other projects,” added plant spokeswoman Lucia Kovarovič Makayová.
Grünberg claims that over the last three months, the situation with downtime has been much better.
The share of SUVs has increased
As for the number of units, for the third year already, Volkswagen is lagging behind the pre-covid year 2019, in which Slovakia produced