No quick fix at Bedford as losses continue
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• Bedford's decision to pull out of volume truck and bus production in the UK will not provide a quick solution to the company's financial problems, according to general manager Paul Tosch.
Speaking at tbe Motor Show last week, Tosch confirmed that Bedford's results for 1986 will be "very poor, because of the large, one-time costs of phasing out Bedford's non-military truck business."
He would not say how poor the company's 1986 figures would be, although he predicts that any recovery will take several years.
Bedford's decision to quit the civilian UK truck and bus market follows losses of £187 million accumulated over the last three years. Last year it recorded losses of £73 million.
Some 1,500 people are expected to be made redundant at Bedford's Dunstable and Luton CV plants, and by the end of the year only about 1,000 workers will remain at Dunstable, assembling military trucks.
Despite strong local union opposition, Tosch confirmed that the redundancy programme will be carried out. We wouldn't take a decision like that very lightly — it will go through," Withdrawing from the civilian truck market will not, Tosch believes, jeopardise Bedford's current relationship with the Ministry of Defence for which it is still building army trucks.
"We have got contracts that run several years," says Tosch. "Beyond that there is potential to extend."
Bedford's current MoD contract, however, runs out in 1988, and while Tosch says that his company has submitted plans for new military vehicles, he concedes that if no further British military orders are forthcoming after 1988, the company "will have to look" at the option of ceasing heavy truck production.