Despondent workers at the Ford engine plant in Bridgend have been pictured leaving work this evening after discovering they will all lose their jobs.

The US car maker has blamed ‘changing customer demand and cost disadvantages’ for its plans to close the Welsh factory in September next year.

The news was broken to workers inside the plant this morning and they have been told to go home and not return until Monday.

Around 1,700 people work at the plant which has been making engines for 40 years.

Unions say the closure will be an ‘economic sledgehammer to the Welsh economy’ and have vowed to resist it ‘with all their might’.

The company has blamed the ending of a contract with Jaguar Land Rover, more electric cars hitting the market and falling diesel and petrol sales.

Ford have previously warned that a no-Brexit deal could be ‘catastrophic’ for the British auto industry and some people suspect uncertainty over Britain’s future EU trade relationship is a reason,

But the company has ruled this with Ford’s European president Stuart Rowley telling reporters the same decision would be made if Brexit wasn’t happening.

The news come after Ford announced in May it would cut 7,000 white-collar from its global operation as part of a major restructuring exercise, with up to 550 losses expected in the UK.

He said the Bridgend workers were ‘great’, ‘outstanding’ and had ‘done nothing wrong’ adding they will be offered enhanced redundancies and help finding new jobs.

Mr Rowley added: ‘As a major employer in the UK for more than a century, we know that closing Bridgend would be difficult for many of our employees.

‘We recognise the effects it would have on their families and the communities where they live and, as a responsible employer, we are proposing a plan that would help to ease the impact.

‘We are committed to the UK, however, changing customer demand and cost disadvantages, plus an absence of additional engine models for Bridgend going forward make the plant economically unsustainable in the years ahead.’

Ford has excess capacity in other plants around the world for the engines produced in Bridgend, and its factory in Mexico has more ‘cost advantages’.

Worker Tim Kembell told Wales Online the mood inside the plant had been ‘sombre’ but said staff weren’t surprised either.

He said: ‘They have been making promises of investment but we all suspected it was not going to happen.’

Unions have hit back at the company who they say has treated its workers ‘abysmally’.

GMB regional organiser Jeff Beck said: ‘We’re hugely shocked by today’s announcement, it’s a real hammer blow for the Welsh economy and the community in Bridgend.

‘Regardless of today’s announcement, GMB will continue to work with Ford, our sister unions and the Welsh Government to find a solution to the issue and to mitigate the effects of this devastating news.’

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: ‘Ford’s decision to shut its Bridgend engine plant in 2020 is a grotesque act of economic betrayal.

He accused Ford of breaking ‘promise after promise’ to the UK, including backtracking on plans to build 500,000 engines at Bridgend.

‘That fell to a quarter of a million, then fell again and again,’ he added.

‘The company has deliberately run down its UK operations so that now not a single Ford vehicle – car or van – is made in the UK.

‘Ford has treated its UK workers abysmally, and they could do so because the fact remains that it is cheaper, easier and quicker to sack our workers than those in our competitor countries.

‘But Ford can forget about it if it thinks we will make it easy for Ford to walk away from this workforce. We will resist this closure with all our might.’

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner added: ‘Ford will be taking an economic sledgehammer to the Welsh economy in an act of gross industrial sabotage if it doesn’t urgently reverse these closure plans.

He said Ford should rebalance engine production from Mexico and India to Bridgend rather than ‘betray’ it’s workers who have helped make the site ‘one of the most efficient engine plants in the world’.

The Bridgend site opened in 1980, covers an area of 60 acres, and is one of Wales’s major employers.

Ford is not alone in announcing the closure of its plants, with Honda also due to shut its Swindon plant in 2021, costing workers thousands of jobs.

Nissan also reversed a decision to build its new X-Trail vehicle at its Sunderland plant, which has a 7,000-strong workforce.

Land Rover, owned by India’s Tata Motors, announced a plan to cut 4,500 jobs in a bid to reduce costs, most of which are expected to be in the UK.

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