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Renault strikes back
Page 20
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• The recent strike at Renault Truck Industries' Dunstable assembly plant lost the company eight days' full production, worth some 250 vehicles, but RTI managing director Francis Cousin asserts that Renault's troubled UK truck building subsidiary will recoup any lost sales before the end of the year and break-even financially in 1988.
Cousin says that RT1 is aiming to keep its current market share in 1988 — last year it sold 5,042 commercial vehicles to give it an 8.7% share of the truck and artic market above 3.5 tonnes GVW.
Despite its problems over recent years, RT1's bank balance continues to improve according to Cousin.
Last year it cut its total losses of just under £12 million (recorded in 1986) to some £3.1 million. During the second half of last year, however, the company reports it was trading profitably.
The company is believed to be on target to at least break even this year, and up to the end of February it was trading ahead of the same period last year reports Cousin.
The most difficult part of the restructuring within RT1's parent company Renault Vehicules Industriels "is behind us" says Renault Group chairman Raymond Levy.
According to Levy: "No industry can ever say it has completed its structure, but the hardest thing we had to do is now done."
Levy maintains that the proof of the restructuring success is in the fact that, like Renault overall, RVI made a profit last year for the first time since at least 1982 (CM 24-30 March).
According to Levy, RVI chairman Phiffipe Grass "was able to tell newspapermen last week that he expected (RVI) profits to treble between now and the end of 1988". In 1987 RVI made pre-tax profits of FF290 million (£27.6 million).
Despite the changes within its CV division, Levy insists that RVI will continue to product its own engines, gearboxes and axles for its trucks and buses.