PAMPLONA, 22 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The president of the Volkswagen Navarra works council, Alfredo Morales, pointed out this Friday that "all the news that reaches us" goes in the direction that finally the automobile group will not install a battery factory at its Landaben site and will commission the supply to Hyundai.

"That is the reality," Alfredo Morales assured, in statements to Europa Press, after information published by Diario de Navarra that indicates that the battery factory will be outside of Landaben and the group will entrust the supply to Hyundai.

The president of the works council has assured that "we are now focused on negotiating and agreeing with the company management on a collective agreement" that will allow us to face "this downturn that we are going to go through in the years 2024 and 2025 - due to the drop in the volume of sale and the transition to electric vehicles - and guarantee employability from 2026".

Alfredo Morales has recognized that "the battery factory would have been very important for our plant and for our industrial project." "I still think it is a mistake that the factory is 8 kilometers from our plant," he lamented.

In any case, he has insisted that "now our objective is to guarantee employability for the years 2024 and 2025 in the most sustainable way possible", after the negotiating table for the collective agreement was established this Thursday.

Alfredo Morales explained that in 2024 and 2025 a "bump" is expected due to the reconversion of the factory for the production of electric vehicles, which he highlighted as "positive", and due to a lower forecast of sales volumes in the market, which he described as "less positive".

The president of the committee has appreciated that the collective agreement negotiations have already been undertaken. "There will already be a drop in production in 2024 and we must implement measures to cushion the impact. There will be very intense weeks and days to agree on what we need," he assured.