Autoeuropa output at record in 2019

Portugal’s largest car plant achieved, for the second consecutive year, both a production and turnover record in 2019, generating 1,7% of national GDP.

The information was published when the Palmela plant started to produce 890 cars a day again, back to pre-Covid levels.
Autoeuropa’s turnover rose 15% in 2019, worth €3.7Bn, in a year in which the Volkswagen plant registered a new record for car production, for the second consecutive year.
The data were revealed on Tuesday, 25 August, by the Automobile Association of Portugal (ACAP).
The company’s turnover had already reached a record in the previous year, in 2018, when it registered €3,2Bn.
The records achieved in both production and turnover are due to the T-Roc effect in Palmela.
Between the end of 2016 and the end of 2019, the turnover of the largest national automobile factory skyrocketed 146%, due to the start of production of the SUV T-Roc from the summer of 2017 at Autoeuropa.
The information comes at a time when Volkswagen’s Portuguese factory has completely resumed its 19 weekly shifts, 15 on working days and four on weekends, just as it did before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the company’s official source and reported by Jornal Económico.
This means that the factory started to produce 890 cars a day, between Volkswagen T-Roc, the vast majority, and Seat Sharan, the coordinator of the workers’ commission told Jornal Económico (JE). “The measures that the company adopted created a sense of security,” says Fausto Dionísio.
Despite the return to production at pre-Covid rhythms, with four months ahead until the end of the year to recover production, Autoeuropa did not want to release forecasts on numbers for 2020.
The German group’s factory closed 2019 with a new production record. The largest automobile factory in Portugal produced a total of 256,878 units.
This figure represents an increase of 16.3% compared to 2018, a year in which another record was reached when 223 thousand units were produced at the Portuguese Volkswagen plant (106% more than in 2017).
Autoeuropa recorded a drop in production of 38,2% between January and July this year in a total of 98 thousand units manufactured, according to ACAP data.
Separating by brands, Volkswagen T-Roc production dropped 37.9% to 88,804 units, while Seat Sharan’s production dropped 41% to 9,288 units.
After stopping for almost a month and a half due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Autoeuropa resumed production on April 27.
Of the more than 97,000 units produced by the Palmela factory that were exported this year, the German market absorbed 28,8% of the vehicles, or a total of 28,000 units.
It is followed by Italy (13,3% of vehicles produced in Palmela), the United Kingdom (11,1%), Spain (7,1%) and France (6,8%).
Despite Covid-19’s negative impact on Autoeuropa, and the global automotive industry, there is a positive feeling at the Volkswagen group’s Portuguese factory now that the most severe period of the pandemic has passed.
“More Volkswagens are made in Germany than in Portugal. We have to create conditions for more Volkswagens to be made in Portugal than in Germany. That’s our challenge,” said the director general of Autoeuropa, Miguel Sanches on 13 May during a visit to the factory by the Prime Minister, António Costa and the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.