Carmaker Stellantis stopped production on Monday at El Palomar, its plant in Buenos Aires province that builds the Peugeot 208 and 2008, and plans to resume normal activity on January 18, union sources said.
Stellantis sources said the pause adjusts output to weaker car sales in Argentina and to stock piled up at the company and its dealers, and that the plant will build cars for only about two weeks, in late November and early December. They said some workers will be suspended but none dismissed. Union sources said vacations have been brought forward and spread over November and December.
Peugeot’s share of the Argentine car market has fallen from about 9% last year to about 5%, Herlander Zola, Stellantis’s South America chief, said this month, when he also said the company does not rule out closing one or both Argentine plants. He blamed imports from China and Brazil after Argentina opened its car market. El Palomar had already dropped one of its two shifts in May. Stellantis Argentina’s president, Martín Zuppi, said last Thursday that both plants will keep operating normally.
The company’s other plant, Ferreyra in the central province of Córdoba, will stop building its Fiat Titano and Ram Dakota pickups from December 1, also until January 18. The Fiat Cronos line there keeps its usual schedule.