Irish automotive company Aptiv could move more production to Morocco after pulling out of Ukraine because of the Moscow-Kyiv ongoing crisis. “Aptiv, based in Dublin, is trying to shift production to Poland, Romania, Serbia and possibly Morocco,” Fortune journal reported on April 3.
Aptiv’s Chief Financial Officer Joseph Massaro noted that this process will take up to six weeks, which will leave some car manufacturers short of supplies during that time. The move comes because of the current crisis in Ukraine. Massaro said that the country “is not open for any type of normal commercial activity.”
Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark said shortly after the war started that “over the course of the last couple of months, we actually moved a couple of what I call high runner programs out of Ukraine. Aptiv is a global automotive supplier that is based in Dublin, Ireland.
Aptiv designs and manufactures vehicle components, as well as providing electrical, electronic, and active safety technology solutions to the global automotive and commercial vehicle markets.
The automotive supplier had already started constructionon a factory in Oujda in January 2022 that is estimated to bring 3,500 jobs to Morocco’s eastern region. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the automotive sector yielded MAD 83.8 billion ($8.56 billion) from the total value of final products and services exported outside of Morocco in 2021.
Morocco’s automotive industry is the biggest exporter in the country. The sector helped make Morocco the first automotive manufacturer on the African continent in 2018, when it grossed $7 billion (MAD 65.1 billion) in exports, and surpassed South Africa.
Additionally, Morocco’s automotive industry createdover 200,000 jobs and sold over 160,000 units in 2021. The Association of Car Importers in Morocco reported that care sales in Morocco in March 2022 decreased by 6.26%, compared to March 2021.
