Ford closes its Genk plant in Belgium after 50 years of operation

Yesterday, at two in the afternoon, the last Ford was built at the production centre in Genk, Belgium. The event marked the closure of these facilities, announced in October 2012, which had reached half a century of operation this year. In total, fourteen million vehicles have rolled off its assembly lines.

Its workforce numbered around 4,000 workers, but the closure of the plant will also affect another 7,400 jobs in the auxiliary industry, according to a study carried out by the University of Hasselt. Ford will keep a few hundred employees who will be in charge of dismantling the production lines over the coming months.

Ford decided to build the plant in the early 1960s to complement the production capacity of its facilities in Antwerp. The foundation stone was laid in 1962, and on 2 January 1964 the Genk lines were ready to build 6,000 units a day of the Taunus 12M [P4]. That inaugural year, 62,076 vehicles were produced, and in 1965 the newly launched Transit joined the lines, replacing the Taunus Transit.

In its final stage, the Genk plant has been building the Galaxy, the S-Max and the fourth-generation Mondeo, models that were assigned two years ago to Almussafes. The last car the Belgian plant has produced is a white Galaxy whose bodywork was signed by members of the workforce and which will be donated to charity.

Following the closure of Genk and the of Opel facilities in Antwerp in 2010, the car industry in Belgium is represented by the Audi factory in Forest, a municipality in the Brussels region, where the A1 is produced, and by the Volvo plant in Ghent, where the V40, the V40 Cross Country, the S60 and the XC60 are assembled.

Via | Automotive News and Limburg Provincial Library
Photos | EFE and Ford