GM still fancies Seddon
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GENERAL MOTORS is still interested in buying Seddon Atkinson from International Harvester, Seddon's ailing parent company.
GM, along with Enasa (the Spanish manufacturer of Pegaso and Sava commercials) and an unnamed British consortium, are known to be interested in Seddon, and GM says it is particularly interested in Seddon's distributor network for heavy vehicles.
Indeed, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders figures for the first quarter of this year suggest that Seddon is performing relatively better than GM's Bedford in the truck and artic sector.
While Bedford's market share fell from 13.2 per cent in the same three months last year to 11.3 per cent, Seddon's climbed from 3.7 to 4.9 per cent, taking it ahead of Daf, Iveco and Scania.
But Seddon's immediate prospects are still rather gloomy, as the company is starting the formal procedures to shed 134 jobs in its manufacturing and central services departments. Initially, it is looking for voluntary redundancies.
The possibility of jobs disappearing in the components division (CM, April 9) is still being discussed, and this would involve the loss of an additional unspecified number of workers.
MEMBERSHIP of the Freight Transport Association dropped almost 1,000 to 14,226 last year.
The directors' report and accounts show that a surplus of £119,426 was made for 1982, compared with £175,619 for 1981.