Vauxhall Sets Up New Records
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DESPITE the international crisis, Vauxhall Motors, Ltd., last year produced the record number of 87,454 vehicles-4 per cent. more than in 1949. Commercial vehicles accounted for 40,429 of this total. Export markets took 25,562 (63 per cent.) Bedford vehicles, leaving 14,867 for home users.
Exports were the highest ever recorded and their value, including that of spare parts, amounted to £171m. The number of vehicles sold was 3,287 greater than in 1949. Total net sales amounted to £31,637,999, an increase of 6 per cent. over the previous year's figure.
"The export demand for road transport appears to be insatiable at the moment," says the company's annual report, "but there are no grounds for complacency, because it is evident that much of the demand is coming our way on account of the general world shortage of dollars and the absence of serious competition from other manufacturing countries. "This competition is growing, and as it develops and dollars become more plentiful, our industry can maintain its position only by continuing improvement in manufacturing efficiency and consequent reduction of those elements of cost within our own control."
The report points out that the present and future high level of employment in the motor industry is dependent, to an important degree, on the continuation of a high export demand, and that it is in the interests of labour, as well as of the Government and management, to see that this demand is maintained.
During the past year the company's costs of raw and other materials registered a greater increase than at any time during the past 10 years.
Looking into the future, the report emphasizes the risk that Britain may price itself out of the export markets. " This danger is now with us as an everblackening cloud," it states.
Because of "a sudden and apparently unforeseen shortage of sheet steel (amongst other things)," Vauxhall Motors, Ltd., has this year had to cut its 1950 production schedule by some 20 per cent., instead of expanding it.
Thus, for the present, full use cannot be made of the facilities provided by the new 19-acre factory building at Luton.