Japanese car giant Honda backs post-Brexit Britain with £200million investment boost
The company plans to turn its plant in Swindon into a 'global production hub' for the Honda Civic
JAPANESE car giant Honda has pledged its full commitment to post-Brexit Britain in a huge £200 million investment boost for Theresa May.
Honda’s Europe chief Katsushi Inoue said the company wanted to transform its Swindon plant into a “global production hub” as he unveiled plans to build a new five-door Civic at the factory.
He said: “It was our plan regardless of Brexit, it was the plan before the vote in June, and it remains the plan after the Brexit vote.
“No change.”
Honda’s promise comes just days after the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe issued a withering assessment of the uncertainty Brexit will cause.
In an unprecedented 15 page report that emerged at the G20 the Japanese government warned of “great turmoil” if Britain loses access to the EU’s single market.
Under the plans for the Civic, Honda will build 160,000 motors a year will be built at Swindon.
But critically, around 40 per cent of the production will go to the US in the first time the plant has made cars for the American market.
This will reduce the plant’s reliance on the European market.
Industry experts had feared Honda may use the Referendum result as an excuse to shut Swindon – which was mothballed for two months at the height of the credit crisis.
Swindon was due to stop making the C-RV in 2018 but from the end of that year it will now be responsible for global production of the Civic.