MP for Stoke-on-Trent relates to plant closure

Gareth Snell given assurances over Midlands site as Dundee faces shutdown

Tyre giant Michelin has given “categoric assurances” to workers over the future of its Stoke-on-Trent headquarters, global branding centre and truck tyre re-treading plant after revealing plans to axe 845 jobs at its factory in Dundee.

In an interview with The Courier, Stoke Central Labour MP Gareth Snell said he had been given assurances by the company that the Midlands plant, which employs around 500 people, was secure for the “short to medium term”.

However, he confirmed that a “handful” of administrative posts at the company’s Stoke HQ would be “redeployed” as a direct result of the Dundee closure announcement.

Mr Snell, who voted Remain during the 2016 Brexit vote, also said that the “bigger threat” to the Michelin site in Stoke will “perversely be a Brexitrelated issue if there is no proper trade remedy regulations to prevent Chinese ‘dumping’ of cheap tyres on to the market”.

“I’ve been given categoric assurances that there is no threat to Stoke in the short to medium term,” said Mr Snell.

“The reason, they tell me, is that the Dundee site makes 16-inch tyres.

“The Stoke site re-treads large industrial grade tyres, and the market for the 16-inch tyre is just falling away because cars are getting bigger, lorries are getting bigger, so the tyres need to be bigger, which potentially means there could be more work for Stoke.

“Stoke takes old tyre shells, strips off the old outer rubber that’s worn, and then represses a new rubber outer on to the existing shell.

“It basically recycles the expensive part and re-treads. They do big industrial lorries, tractors, fire engine tyres – so it’s a completely different market to the car tyre that I’m told is done in Dundee.”

Not unlike Dundee, or indeed Ballymena, Northern Ireland, where Michelin closed its plant this year with the loss of 860 jobs, Mr Snell said that in Stoke “everyone knows someone who has worked or does work at ‘the Mich’ because it’s just part of the psyche of the city”.

However, everyone he had spoken to, with the support from the Unite trade union, had been assured that, despite concerns, their immediate futures were secure.

He added: “There may be dicey waters ahead but people are confident the ship is still buoyant and should survive.

Earlier this year the Stoke factory had a five-day manufacturing shutdown affecting more than 100 workers which was blamed on ‘a drop in production’.

However, Michelin in Stoke has just spent a lot of money on the infrastructure of the existing factory.

Unite official Rob Taylor, who is the works convener at the Stoke site, said the factory will have to make savings in the long run.

Bosses of the French tyre manufacturer have reassured the Stoke workforce that the plant is safe in the “short to medium term”.

Gareth Snell MP.