{"id":824492,"date":"2025-05-17T09:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T07:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=824492"},"modified":"2025-05-17T09:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T07:10:23","slug":"major-car-brands-future-in-south-africa-in-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/824492\/major-car-brands-future-in-south-africa-in-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Major car brand’s future in South Africa in question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nissan Motor Co. plans to close two factories in Japan, as well as locations in four other countries as part of its restructuring and cost-cutting process, the Yomiuri newspaper and other news outlets reported<\/a>, citing unidentified sources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Japan, Nissan is looking to close facilities in Oppama and Hiratsuka operated by manufacturing subsidiary Nissan Shatai Co., which represent about 30% of domestic production, according to Kyodo News. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both are located in Kanagawa prefecture, an area south of Tokyo where Nissan\u2019s head office is based.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The once-dominant Japanese carmaker has been dealing with a slump in global sales and profitability in the face of rising competition from China\u2019s fast-growing electric vehicle sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nissan has struggled to regain momentum in the key US market, and is saddled with an outdated product lineup, bloated dealership incentives and a mountain of debt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this week, Nissan said\u00a0it would close\u00a0<\/a>seven production facilities globally<\/strong>, but did not specify the locations. It\u2019s also planning to eliminate 20,000 jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The measures are aimed at cutting costs by \u00a5500 billion ($3.4 billion), and were announced after Nissan reported one of its biggest annual losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globally, Nissan is considering shutting two plants in Mexico<\/strong>, as well as ending production in India<\/strong>, Argentina<\/strong> and South Africa<\/strong>, the Yomiuri reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nissan said in a statement<\/a> that reports of plant closures are \u201cspeculative\u201d and not based on any official information from the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere have been reports about the closure of our factories but these are based on speculation,\u201d subsidiary Nissan Shatai said. <\/a>\u201cThey have not been announced by our company and are not true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talks to combine Nissan with Honda Motor Co. fell apart earlier this year, leading to the ouster of its former chief executive officer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ivan Espinosa, Nissan\u2019s new CEO who took up the role in April, said in an\u00a0interview Thursday<\/a>\u00a0that his restructuring plan can save the automaker without the help of an outside partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is resetting the size of the company,\u201d Espinosa said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Oppama plant focuses on Nissan\u2019s electric car production, including the Leaf and the Note, and has an annual production capacity of 240,000 cars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hiratsuka factory produces commercial vehicles with a capacity of 150,000 units.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Oppama plant is shuttered, it would be the first time that Nissan has closed a major domestic factory since 2001, according to the Yomiuri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

BusinessTech has reached out to Nissan South Africa for comment on the Bloomberg report and how its operations will be affected by the group restructuring. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nissan Global’s statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Regarding the recent reports on the potential closure of certain plants, Nissan wants to clarify that this news is speculative and not based on any official information of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have officially announced to consolidate the production of Nissan Frontier\/Nissan Navara pickups, currently split between Mexico and Argentina, into a single production HUB in the region, centralized at the CIVAC plant in Morelos, Mexico. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March, we announced that Renault Group would own 100% of Renault Nissan Automotive India Private Ltd (RNAIPL), by acquiring the 51%-shareholding currently held by Nissan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this time, we will not be providing further comments on this matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our focus remains on our operations and the dedicated workforce that drives our success. We are committed to maintaining transparency with our stakeholders and will communicate any relevant updates as necessary.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nissan Motor Co. plans to close two factories in Japan, as well as locations in four other countries as part of its restructuring and cost-cutting process, the Yomiuri newspaper and other news outlets reported, citing unidentified sources.  In Japan, Nissan is looking to close facilities in Oppama and Hiratsuka operated by manufacturing subsidiary Nissan Shatai Co.,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":802564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[5364,22581],"class_list":["post-824492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-nissan","tag-nissan-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824493,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824492\/revisions\/824493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}