AFTER ALMOST 70 YEARS OF OPERATIONS, GM SAYS GOODBYE TO ITS ASSEMBLY PLANT IN COLOMBIA
By Juan Diego Murcia / La República
After almost 70 years of operations in the Colombian market, General Motors announced that manufacturing operations will cease at the Colmotores plant (in Colombia) and will begin today with a dismantling process. This will also happen in Ecuador, at the OBB plant, which will cease operations at the end of August of this year.
The Colmotores plant was operating at only 9% of its installed capacity, while the OBB plant in Ecuador reached 13%.
“The actions we are announcing today are critical to ensure that we are better positioned to offer our customers the most advanced vehicles and technologies, and drive the transformation of the industry in Colombia and Ecuador towards an emission-free future,” said Shilpan Amin, president of GM International.
The decision is driven by the overall results of the sector. According to the most recent Monthly Manufacturing Survey, in February, the productive apparatus adjusted 12 consecutive months with declines in production, sales and employed personnel, and among the 39 manufacturing lines included in this measurement is the manufacture of vehicles, an activity that has shown reductions of more than 60%.
According to the Automotive Industry Chamber of Andi, this productive activity generated more than 357,000 jobs and in the 10 years up to this calendar, it attracted US$580 million in foreign investment.
After the exit of General Motors from this business, Renault remains as the only company dedicated to the assembly of cars in Colombia.
In the 2022 results, the company had fallen to third place in sales in the sector, by recording revenues of $3.56 billion, this is 49.27% higher than the $2.4 billion sales in 2021. In the overall listing, GM was the 57th company that sold the most in the country.
The company said in a statement that the transformation of operations “aims to respond to the challenges of increasing market fragmentation, as well as the underutilization of the Colmotores and GM OBB plants.”
“In accordance with current labor regulations, we hereby inform that, simultaneously with this communication, your employer, General Motors Colmotores S.A. or Zona Franca Industrial Colmotores S.A.S., Zoficol, are filing before the Ministry of Labor the corresponding collective dismissal authorizations for the totality of its workers due to total and definitive termination of work,” it said in a statement.
MinTrabajo confirmed that GM Colmotores has about 800 workers. “The Ministry of Labor, as one of its missionary duties will guarantee the protection of the labor rights of the workers of the vehicle assembler, General Motors in Colombia and will also have a rigorous follow-up so that due process is complied with”, it said in a statement.
In 2013, Zoficol opened the first stamping plant that Colombia had for vehicle parts for the Sail and Cobalt models, both from Chevrolet, which had a goal of exporting stamped parts to Latin America.
This took 17 months in the construction process in an area of 41,319 square meters of the 280,000 square meters that make up the area of the GM Colmotores headquarters. For this purpose, it received investments of US$200 million and part of the stamped parts of the Sail model were exported to Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.
In Zoficol there were six robots that mechanize the welding finishing processes of the vehicles, two high tonnage presses (2,250 and 1,000 tons) to carry out the stamping process, and 10 robots that are in charge of making the graphing or joining of the stamped steel panels.
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This article was originally published in the newspaper La República, with whose authorization we reproduce it here.
