Vauxhall Halts Car Production At Two Plants

Vauxhall has stopped production at its Ellesmere Port and Luton factories for a week, in response to falling car sales across Europe (Chicago Options: ^REURUSD - news) .

In a statement, the company said the move to halt production for five days would "avoid building up stock".

Workers at the plants will continue to be paid during the shutdown, which starts on September 24.

Approximately 1,100 workers at Luton and 2,100 workers at Ellesmere Port are affected.

Production of the next generation Vivaro is due to start at Luton in 2014 and assembly of the new Astra at Ellesmere Port is scheduled to start in 2015.

In May, Vauxhall announced the Astra would be built at Ellesmere Port which guaranteed the future of the Merseyside plant and its 2,100 staff into the next decade.

The future of the North West plant had been in doubt since the beginning of the year after GM (NYSE: GM - news) , Vauxhall's parent company, admitted it was looking at restructuring its European operations and would probably close one of its three plants in the region.

Ellesmere Port, which was built in 1962, made 140,000 Astra Sports Tourer models last year.