From The Charlotte Observer, NC
CHARLOTTE, NC — General Motors Corp. cutbacks announced Monday won’t affect the roughly 160 jobs at the automaker’s service and parts operation in Charlotte, NC, a GM spokeswoman said.
But they could cause ripples that reach into the region’s hundreds of automotive suppliers.
The 16-county Charlotte region is home to 573 companies that make auto components, according to economic-development agency Charlotte Regional Partnership. Many of them count General Motors as a customer.
Among them: Continental Tire North America, headquartered in Charlotte. The company announced in June it was cutting a quarter of its Charlotte production and about 300 workers. CEO Alan Hippe told the Observer in a September interview that the cuts were due to previous production cutbacks by GM and Ford, who he described as “our major customers.”
Hippe couldn’t be reached for comment Monday. But Tony Crumbley, the Charlotte Chamber’s vice president for research, said he feared the company would be hurt further by Monday’s announcement.
Other automotive suppliers in the region gave mixed reports.
ZF Group North America recently opened a new plant in Newton, NC to make control arms. Plant officials said they had an order to make control arms for every full-sized pickup truck and sport utility vehicle that GM produces. Company spokesman Frank Buscemi said Monday that GM’s cutbacks will not prevent the Newton plant from running at its capacity.
AKsys USA Inc., a Gastonia, NC, company that makes acoustic products for soundproofing vehicles, counts on GM for 6 percent to 7 percent of its business, president Tim Smith said. That won’t change in the short term, though it might in the longer term. “There will be some small impacts,” he said.
The region’s automotive cluster is due in part to the BMW manufacturing plant in nearby Greenville-Spartanburg, NC. That and other foreign-owned plants with North American manufacturing capacity, including Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai, might be able to fill the void left by GM, said Michael Campbell, director of economic development for the Charlotte Regional Partnership.
“Just because GM is doing poorly does not mean the automotive industry overall is doing poorly,” he said. “The overall effect might be neutral in our region.”
Copyright (c) 2005, The Charlotte Observer, NC
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