BERLIN, July 16 (Reuters) – The German state of Lower Saxony is interested in supporting plans by Israeli defence company Rafael to establish operations at \u200cVolkswagen’s Osnabrueck site, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on \u200cThursday. <\/p>\n
The sources said various structures were being examined to facilitate Rafael’s entry into the site, where production \u200bof Volkswagen’s T-Roc Cabriolet is due to end next year. <\/p>\n
One model under discussion is a split of the Osnabrueck operation into two companies, an option first reported by the Handelsblatt news outlet, though the sources said this was only one of several strategies being \u200cconsidered. <\/p>\n
Rafael is interested in manufacturing \u2060components for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system at the plant. Reuters reported in April that the Israeli state-owned defence company had \u2060signed a letter of intent with Volkswagen regarding the site. <\/p>\n
A second source familiar with the discussions said on Thursday that Lower Saxony \u2014 where Volkswagen is based and where it \u200boperates five \u200bof its six western German assembly plants \u2014 \u200bwas optimistic the project would succeed \u200cdespite reservations from Qatar, one of Volkswagen’s major shareholders. <\/p>\n
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Volkswagen has also explored whether Lower Saxony could take over the entire plant before transferring it to Rafael. This would leave the state government responsible for the workforce and any potential restructuring \u200ccosts, making the issue more complex. <\/p>\n
Volkswagen and Rafael \u200bdid not immediately respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n
Volkswagen \u200bis under unprecedented pressure to restructure \u200bthe business model that underpinned its success for decades, as it \u200cgrapples with high costs and excess \u200bcapacity at home. <\/p>\n
Those factors, \u200balong with rising Chinese competition, regulation, and U.S. import tariffs, sliced its profit margins in half between 2021 and 2025. <\/p>\n
As a result, Volkswagen plans to drastically \u200bcut its model lineup, \u200cfurther pare back capacity and implement a far-reaching overhaul that sources say \u200bcould cost around 100,000 jobs. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke and Christina Amann, Writing \u200bby Friederike Heine, Editing by Rod Nickel) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN, July 16 (Reuters) – The German state of Lower Saxony is interested in supporting plans by Israeli…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1093588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[298519,2000,299,1824,7465,2188],"class_list":["post-1093587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-defence-company","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-rafael","tag-volkswagen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1093588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}