Crisis Puts All in Standby, PSA and Kia Work Harder

The economic crisis that started last year had still has a big impact on us all. The automotive industry in particular saw all of their forecasts turned upside down, their investment plans stopped and their hopes for a increasing market ruined.

Most car producers in the world are now trying to cut their loses by pausing production, closing subsidiaries, stop research and development and so on. That is not the case with PSA/ Peugeot Citroen and Kia plants based in Slovakia. Due to the Russian gas crisis that forced the plants' activities to stop for a week, both Kia and PSA see themselves in the rare position of having to ask their workers to put in extra hours.

"We have decided to produce cars on Saturdays so we can make up the lost hours. We were stopped seven days so we lost up to 6,000 cars", PSA spokesman Peter Svec told Autonews.

The PSA factory in Trnava produces the Peugeot 207 and Citroen C3 Picasso models.

Meanwhile, Kia executives decided to combine both the economic and Russian gas crisis and use the forced stop of production as a mean to reduce planned cutbacks in working hours. Now, instead of a 30 work hours/week, the Kia plant in Zilina, where the Cee'd and Sportage models are manufactured, will average 35 work hours/week.

Car manufacturing is the most important branch of the Slovakian industry. The country is, since 2007, the world's largest producer of cars per capita, building that same year a little over 570,000 cars. There is a car built for every ten citizens of Slovakia. Alongside PSA and Kia, Volkswagen also has a factory in Bratislava.