Rabat – American automotive manufacturer Delphi Packard is moving its activities, launched in 2015 in Tunisia, to its production unit based in Meknes, Morocco. The move was motivated by repetitive strikes and an unfavorable business climate in Tunisia, versus better political stability and finer infrastructure quality in Morocco.
The American manufacturer and supplier of automotive technologies, one of the first OEMs to establish their subsidiaries in Morocco with a plant in Tangier in 1999, has decided to transfer its manufacturing electrical harnesses activities from Tunisia to Morocco.
For the time being, Delphi has still not disclosed the nature and level of activity that would be conducted in the kingdom.
According to economic magazine Challenge.ma, the move was motivated by the unfavorable business climate in Tunisia, where the group witnessed many strikes during its two years there.
This move will only intensifies the fierce competition between the two North African neighbours in terms of the automotive industry, says Challenge. While the two countries share similar geographic and socio-economic particularities, Tunisia has been losing ground to Morocco for the past couple of years, still recovering from post-Arab Spring political and economic unrest.
The magazine also noted that multinational firms such as Delphi constantly and relentlessly carry out reconfigurations, leading them to displace resources, or close or build factories and centers of competence in the regions of the world that interest them most – that is to say, to optimize their overall costs and value to their customers.
Today, with a worldwide turnover of USD 16.7 billion, the group employs in its four Moroccan production sites, the last of which was built in Meknes in early 2016, nearly 10,000 employees.
