Ford Almussafes faces an inflection point as the plant recalibrates its workforce after last Friday’s grim figures. The multinational intends to cut 1,144 positions, bringing the total headcount to about 4,650. This move marks a clear reduction to a historic low for the facility and underscores the company’s strategic shift away from a reliance on traditional roles.
In the near term, the company notes the end of S-Max and Galaxy production by the end of March. These two models, which together accounted for a small share of last year’s output, were said to have generated a heavy workload despite representing only around 6 percent of total units produced. The longer view is the plant’s path toward electrification by 2026, a transition that proposes 40 percent fewer workers to manufacture fully electric vehicles compared with current internal combustion models.
The changes come amid a period of turbulence at the plant. An employment adjustment plan, in effect until the end of June this year, stems from ongoing supply chain disruptions and the global semiconductor shortage that began in 2020. These issues persisted as vehicle sales fluctuated, contributing to a challenging production environment.
The new era will mark the third major round of workforce changes the Almussafes team has confronted since 2020 and 2021, totaling close to a thousand departures. During the previous rounds, agreements moved many workers out through early retirements and layoffs under terms that varied in generosity. For instance, early retirees often received compensation for a set period, while workers below certain ages benefited from incentives designed to ease transitions to retirement. The last round featured early retirement at age 55, with enhanced severance for those who opted in under favorable terms for workers.
No matter how the numbers eventually settle, the route toward electrification promises one of the darkest chapters in the factorys nearly five-decade history. The site has endured a series of downturns and recoveries that have shaped its identity. To understand the scale, it helps to look back to the late 1970s when the first Ford Fiesta line transformed Almussafes into a production powerhouse, employing more than 10,000 people and turning out roughly 250,000 vehicles annually. By the late 1980s and early 1990s the plan had hit a new milestone by pushing beyond 300,000 annual units as the Fiesta third generation joined the lineup, alongside Escort and Orion. Yet a steady wave of job reductions followed, peaking between 2008 and 2011 as models such as Mazda 2, Ka, and Focus left the mix, leaving the workforce at a historical low around 5,601.
The next major leap came in 2015 when the factory started a broad transformation to accommodate larger vehicles like the Kuga, Mondeo, and Tourneo after the closure of the Genk Belgian plant. That period marked the peak of labor and output growth, a contrast to the current moment as the facility braces for a historic hit to employment during a shift that steps beyond the familiar model lineup toward electric propulsion. This context highlights Almussafes long arc of adaptation, resilience, and the ongoing effort to align with the broader transformation of the auto industry. plant updates and historical production records carried by the company.