CNH Juggles Truck Builds at Spanish, Italian Plants

MADRID – CNH Industrial announces an extensive reorganization of its Iveco European plant network in which production of the Daily range of light-commercial vehicles will shift from Valladolid, Spain, to Suzzara, Italy.

The transfer to Suzzara, where the previous-generation Daily has been built since its June 2014 launch, is to begin in mid-2016. Iveco midyear will move production of cabs for the Iveco Stralis and Trakker ranges to Valladolid from its Madrid plant.

Iveco has invested €36.5 million ($38.9 million) in the Valladolid plant since 2012 and received an additional €5.5 million ($5.9 million) from the federal and regional governments.

Only two months ago, the truck maker announced the Valladolid plant had begun producing the last generation of the Daily van range after several months of retooling and updating. Only chassis-cab versions of the Daily had been produced during those months. That product will move to Suzzara, joining the Daily panel vans already built at the Italian facility.

In September, Fiat Chrysler-owned CNH Industrial announced the Valladolid facility had achieved the maximum efficiency level according to the World Class Manufacturing internal-auditing system based on 10 industrial and 10 management criteria.

At the core of CNH Industrial’s reorganization is the 2,300-worker Iveco plant in Brescia, Italy, which assembles Eurocargo medium trucks ranging from 6 to 19 tons GVW. Brescia’s products have been at the center of more than 20 years of polarization in the European truck market, from trucks below 9 tons and more than 16 tons.

In recent years, that polarization has been increasing between trucks below 3.5 tons and heavy-rigid models and tractors. Urban traffic congestion and greater versatility are the respective reasons for such an evolution.

Even the Daily range, initially conceived for the 2.8- to 3.5-tons GVW segment, has been evolving to the 3.2- to 7-ton segment, cannibalizing the low end of Eurocargo sales even as the Eurocargo has cannibalized the low end of the Stralis range, overlapping with 16- to 19-ton models.

Thus, sales of the Eurocargo, in other times a torrent of money for Iveco, have been continuously diving, leaving the Brescia plant with a surplus of employees. CNH Industrial plans to respond by transferring about 600 workers to Suzzara later in 2016 and assigning them to Daily production shifted from Valladolid.

Additionally, production of defense vehicles and vehicles powered by compressed natural gas and liquid natural gas will be transferred from Madrid to the Piacenza, Italy, plant where Iveco assembles its Astra range of dump trucks and extra-heavy trucks. This is expected to create 40 new jobs.

As for the 2,700 jobs at Madrid and 1,047 at Valladolid, CNH Industrial says the workforces of both plants could be maintained if demand for heavy trucks in the European market increases as expected.