Ford Saarlouis Assembly Plant To Stay Open To 2032

March 30, 2023 9:39 am

The future of the Ford Saarlouis Assembly plant in Germany has been in limbo for some time now, with FoMoCo announcing that it will stop producing vehicles there in 2025 just last June, as the automaker instead chose the Valencia Assembly plant in Spain as the site where it will build future all-electric models. Since then, Ford has been looking for a potential suitors for the Saarlouis plant, with Chinese EV maker BYD emerging as a candidate early this year. However, a few weeks later, word surfaced that those talks may not actually lead to a deal, even though the German government wouldn’t block such a transaction. Now, strangely enough, it seems as if The Blue Oval has reversed course and decided to keep the Ford Saarlouis Assembly plant open through 2032, according to Automotive News Europe.

Ford will stop producing the Focus at the Saarlouis plant in 2025, as previously expected, but it will continue to remain open through the end of 2032, albeit with a greatly reduced workforce of around 1,000 workers – versus the 4,500 that are employed at the plant today. “It is only thanks to our joint solidarity that this has been achieved,” said employee representative Markus Thal.

What’s particularly strange about this development is the fact that a Ford spokesperson confirmed that the automaker plans to stop producing vehicles at the Saarlouis plant altogether in 2025, but noted that the move is being made in an effort to attract new investors to the site who may want to take over its operations.

For now, Saarlouis will stick to its planned annual capacity of 117,000 Focus models per year, but soon, it will slash the number of units built on each of its two shifts to around 300 per day. Currently, the plant churns out around 860 vehicles a day, a number that will drop to 600 starting the first of April. Once Focus production ends in 2025, Ford will retain employees that aren’t involved in building that model, but it’s currently unclear what the automaker has planned for the following seven years it will remain open.

We’ll have more on the future of all Ford plants soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for ongoing Ford news coverage.

By Brett Foote

Brett's lost track of all the Fords he's owned over the years and how much he's spent modifying them, but his current money pits include an S550 Mustang and 13th gen F-150.