Aston Martin slashes jobs amid ‘difficult but necessary’ cost-cutting plan

Aston Martin has cut 170 jobs after losses widened by a fifth last year and it sold fewer cars than in 2023, following a string of supply chain issues and production delays.

The luxury car manufacturer said it is planning to axe 5% of its workforce as part of a cost-cutting plan, as it seeks to return to profit amid a slew of new product launches.

The British manufacturing giant – famous for making fictional spy James Bond’s cars – is understood to be making most of the cuts – about 150 people – in the UK.

All of the company’s departments will be hit, including manufacturing, office jobs and management.

Aston Martin has its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and another factory in St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan.

‘Resourced’

It said on Wednesday that the aim is to make sure the company is “appropriately resourced for its future plans”, calling the cuts a “difficult but necessary action”.

The company is targeting yearly savings of £25 million, and expects to hit about half of that total this year.

Meanwhile, Aston Martin also said it will delay the rollout of its first fully electric vehicle until near the end of the decade.

It was originally set to be launched in 2026, and the delay is part of what the company is calling a “phased approach” to electrification.

Since it was bought by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll in 2020, Aston Martin has pushed on with a swathe of new model launches in a bid to turn its ailing fortunes around.

It recently appointed Adrian Hallmark as its new chief executive, with him taking on the role in September amid a ramping up of sales of its new Vantage and DBX707 models, which it said helped boost production volumes.

The company also launched its flagship Vanquish model in September.

Aston Martin said the launches helped boost sales later in the year as it started delivering more of the new models to customers, with wholesale volumes picking up 10% year on year in the second half compared with 2023.

Wholesale volumes

But the company’s wholesale volumes for the whole year were still down 9% at 6,030 cars, pushing its pre-tax losses to gape by a further 21% to £289 million.

It also saw its debt pile balloon by 43% to £1.16 billion during the year, while shares were down about 33% over the last year.

Aston Martin had warned in September that supply chain issues would hit annual production by about 1,000 cars.

Meanwhile, it has also been battling weak trading in China amid a downturn in demand across the country.

Mr Hallmark said it has been “a period of intense product launches, coupled with industry-wide and company challenges”.

He said he wants Aston Martin to “transition from a high-potential business to a high-performing one, better equipped to navigate future opportunities and uncertainties”.