PSA Temporary Stops Production in Slovakia Due to Weak Demand

PSA plans several production stoppage days in Slovakia due to weak demand in Europe.

Today, January 28th, PSA Peugeot Citroen stopped production in Slovakia and announced it will other four more stoppage days in February, due to weak demand in the European market. The automaker has a plant in the western Slovak town of Trnava where it manufactures the Peugeot 207 and Citroen C3 Picasso models. PSA Peugeot Citroen predicts that production in the country will surpass the 2012 output with almost 215,000 vehicles.

“Demand for new cars in Europe is continuously falling. Decreasing trends in sales transform into production cuts by several carmakers,” PSA Slovakia said in a statement.

Any disruption in the auto sector production could have a dramatic impact on the economy, which is expected to drop to 2.1% this year from 2.5% in 2012 due to slow demand for exports. In October 2012 PSA announced it was to close the plant for 21 days due to decreased demand. The Trnava facility manufactures 300,000 vehicles annually, but in 2011 it only produced 177,000 units, mainly exported to Italy, Germany, Spain and France.

“Demand for new cars in Europe has been falling continuously over the past 11 months. The Trnava assembly plant of PSA Peugeot Citroen Slovakia decided to reduce number of production days due to the falling demand,” said PSA Peugeot Citroen Slovakia back in October.