Nissan are celebrating 25 years of production in the UK at the company's Sunderland plant.
It is 25 years to the day that the then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher performed the opening ceremony of the Nissan Sunderland plant. The plant went on to produce 5,139 Nissan Bluebirds in its first year, dwarfed by the 423,262 units produced at the factory in 2010. Nissan has produced 6.2 million vehicles across 12 models at the North East facility since it opened, and last year marked the first time that a UK car plant had exceeded 400,000 units in a single year.
Staff levels have increased from 430 in 1986 to around 5,000 today. Of that original 430 staff, 133 remain employed at the plant a quarter of a century later, and two of those - Senior Vice President for Manufacturing in Europe Trevor Mann, and Vice President for Manufacturing in the UK Kevin Fitzpatrick - will be performing a time capsule ceremony to mark the anniversary in recreation of the one performed when construction began.
The Sunderland plant is continuing to grow, with production due to start at its new lithium-ion battery plant early next year in preparation for Nissan LEAF production which starts in 2013.
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