Ford
has named its Bridgend Engine Plant as a further location to source its new
1.5-litre four-cylinder EcoBoost gasoline engine.
In parallel with the news,
Ford has announced a £24 million investment in the facility, £12 million of
which will be provided by the Welsh Government in the form of a ‘support
package’.
The investment will bring
valuable work to machine tool companies and equipment suppliers. Ford adds that
the investment will also ‘help safeguard and create high-quality production and
engineering jobs in Wales’.
Bridgend builds 2,668
four-cylinder engines a day, with exports going to Spain, Sweden, Germany,
Russia, Belgium and the USA. The
facility also makes V6 and V8 engines for customers (principally for Jaguar and
Land Rover) and, together with four-cylinder engines, the total is 3,400
engines a day. This might suggest a total of 732 V6 and V8 engines a day.
Employment at Bridgend will
rise to 2,300 this year.
Ford’s Bridgend facility’s
total production now exceeds 17 million engines. Its engines power vehicles
such as the Ford Fiesta, B-Max, Focus, C-Max, Kuga and Mondeo models.
Overall, the plant has
benefitted from an investment of £1.8 billion since it was opened in 1980. The
new 1.5-litre EcoBoost will be built alongside the 1.6-litre EcoBoost the
company introduced in 2011.
The 1.5-litre EcoBoost is
the first engine with a computer-controlled clutch on the belt-driven water
pump which improves efficiencies by reducing warm-up timer. A new water-cooled
charge air cooler provides a more efficient air feed to the engine which also
features an integrated exhaust manifold.
bridgen
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