Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Nissan unveiled plans to end production after almost seven decades at the first car plant in Japan to use robots, just days before a crunch election in the world’s fourth-largest economy.
The Japanese carmaker said on Tuesday that it would close the Oppama factory if it failed to find a buyer by the time production ceases in March 2028, marking the end of an era for one of Japan’s most renowned car plants that has produced almost 18mn vehicles.
“We understand this is a very, very painful thing to go through,” said Nissan’s new chief executive Ivan Espinosa, who is trying to turn around the struggling automaker. The plant “helped shape Nissan’s identity and has created numerous vehicles cherished by customers around the world”, he added.
The announcement comes as part of Espinosa’s sweeping restructuring plan to cut 20,000 jobs and rationalise its global production network down from 17 to 10 plants.
The decision comes at a sensitive time for Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba as the nation goes to the polls on Sunday in an upper house election viewed as pivotal to determining his survival.
The plant is located in Kanagawa, a key prefecture for heavyweight politicians in Japan such as former prime minister Yoshihide Suga and agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi, whose seat is near the plant.
Koizumi met with Espinosa soon after the restructuring plan was announced in May and publicly criticised the company for stoking worries among employees because of a lack of details around factory closures.
The closure of a large-scale car plant in Japan marks the latest transfer of power in the global automotive industry from once dominant Japanese companies to ascendant Chinese EV rivals.
The Oppama factory employs 2,400 people but has suffered from woeful utilisation rates at around 40 per cent.
By consolidating production in Nissan’s Kyushu plant, Espinosa aims to get operating rates up to 100 per cent and save 15 per cent of costs across its Japan operations.
Opened in the early 1960s, Oppama helped power Nissan’s rise to a global automotive powerhouse in the postwar period as one of Japan’s first large-scale production sites and the first auto plant in the country to use welding robots in 1970.
Local media reports said that iPhone supplier Foxconn was in talks with Nissan over Oppama but Espinosa denied that there were active discussions about a joint venture or contract manufacturing arrangement for the plant.
“We are considering a sale of the assets or a repurposing of the land,” Espinosa said.
Oppama is the third plant affected by Nissan’s restructuring plans, with the car group halting production in Argentina and handing its India operations over to alliance partner Renault.
