The Audi plant in Brussels is closing for good. On February 28, 2025, the last car will roll off the assembly line of the plant and about three thousand employees will go home. The decision was hastily agreed in early January as part of a cost-cutting plan amid falling profits. Audi also hopes to save up to a billion euros a year by reducing personnel and material costs, Handelsblatt reports.
At the end of February, production of the Audi Q8 e-tron and Q8 Sportback e-tron crossovers in Brussels will end, after which the plant will be closed. Its workers will be laid off by mutual consent, which was not immediately achieved: the company and the unions could not agree on the amount of compensation, which led to the shutdown of the conveyors. It was previously expected that the Brussels plant would operate until at least 2027 and would assemble another model - the Q4 e-tron crossover, which is produced in Zwickau.
However, sales of electric cars have turned out to be much worse for the brand than expected, and the plant requires large investments. Logistics and production are expensive, as parts have to be transported from other sites, and it is impossible to expand the plant - it is squeezed between residential buildings and a railway line.
The closure of the Brussels plant is part of Audi's cost-cutting plan. The company also wants to reduce its material costs by eight billion euros by 2030. It is forced to take this step after a serious decline in sales, which in 2024 fell by almost 12 percent globally and by 21.3 percent in its native Germany.
The Volkswagen Group explains the negative trend with “difficult economic conditions, a tense market environment and limited parts availability“.
Audi, which plans to reduce costs in terms of materials as well, has already been criticized for not having a high-quality appearance in its car salons. The manufacturer admits that “in the past, Audi was undoubtedly better in terms of quality“ and promised “to work on the mistakes“.