Economy
The Ford Southampton plant is a motor vehicle assembly plant, located in Swaythling. It is the current western European home to the production of the Ford Transit van. The plant, purposefully located on a 44-acre (180,000 m2) site near to Southampton Airport, was built as a shadow factory to assemble aircraft components for engineering firm Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft, opened by the Mayor of Southampton on 2 February 1939. At the outbreak of World War 2, its whole supply chain was switched to produce parts for the Supermarine Spitfire. Recognised as an important part of the British war effort, it was bombed on a number of occasions by the Nazi Luftwaffe, the first in September 1940. In the latter years of the war, the site was used to assemble the Spitfire.
After Cunliffe-Owen was placed in receivership in 1947, the factory was bought in 1949 by Briggs Motor Bodies, who supplied Ford of Britain with bodies for their vehicles. In 1953 Ford acquired Briggs, and hence gained control of the 630,000 square feet (59,000 m2) Southampton plant. From 1965, Ford had started to produce the Ford Transit in Great Britain, with bodies from Swayling shipped up the M3 motorway to be mated with chassis at the Langley, Berkshire factory, near Slough. In 1972, Ford of Britain invested £5M in the Southampton plant, enabling it to make the complete Transit van. The first Transit rolled off of the production line in the same year, given to the mayor to be used as a gift for a local charity. From this point until the mid-1980s was the height of production, with the factory employing 4,500 workers.
In 1983 with construction of the M27 motorway starting, the site was permanently cut-off from Southampton Airport. In 2002, Ford stopped producing passenger cars in the UK, leaving the Southampton made Transit as their only British-made vehicle. In 2009, with the new Kocaeli, Turkey, plant in full production, Ford reluctantly halved production at Southampton and reduced the workforce to just over 500.
Currently employing 500 workers, the factory produces up to 35,000 Transit chassis/cab variant vehicles annually, of which 50% are exported.
The very first branch of the DIY chain B&Q was opened in Swaythling in 1969, near to where the current B&Q store in Swaythling stands.
Read more about this topic: Swaythling
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)