Cummins fires Shotts
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by John Kendall • Cummins is to close its engine plant at Shotts in Scotland by the end of the year. The factory, which employs 700, produces the L10, Mll and N14 engines used by Seddon Atkinson, Leyland Daf, ERF, Foden and Dennis.
After the Shotts closure, Cummins will supply all automotive engines through its Darlington plant. This currently produces the smaller B and C Series engines, but manufacture of the larger engines will not be moved there. Cummins is expected to source those from the US, where automotive variants of the bigger engines are produced for the North American market.
Cummins also has joint venture agreements to produce engines in China, Russia, Turkey and Pakistan. In theory, the company could supply engines to Europe from these low labour cost production bases.
The closure of Shotts is part of Cummins worldwide rationalisation announced last October which will see 2,000 jobs lost. A small number of Shotts jobs could be relocated on a voluntary basis to Darlington and its Diesel Recon facility at Cumbernauld.
Cummins is applying for a grant from the Government to build a factory at Sandwich in Kent. This could potentially employ up to 600 people and replace smaller premises used to manufacture industrial generator sets which houses about 250 people_ "It is not feasible to transfer the work from Kent to Scotland because the lines and buildings are not capable of handling the heavyweight generator sets," says Cummins. "There are also people down there that we need to keep hold of and the problems of transferring them to Scotland," says Cummins.