Stellantis to halt Melfi plant operations in Italy for two days

MILAN (Reuters) -Stellantis will halt operations at its Melfi plant in southern Italy on Wednesday and Thursday due to a shortage of a component that uses micro chips, a trade unionist said.

Marco Lomio, the local head of UILM metalworkers union, said on Tuesday that the Italo-French carmaker had just informed workers’ representatives.

The Melfi plant, which employs more than 7,000 workers, makes the Jeep Compass and Renegade models, some of Stellantis’ bestsellers in Europe.

A spokesman for the carmaker said the group has been taking decisions on operations on a day-by-day, plant-by-plant basis since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lomio said that the plant had produced only 130,000 cars so far this year due to the global semiconductor shortage. This makes it certain that full-year output will stay below the 190,000 units produced in pandemic-hit 2020, he said.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Alvise Armellini and Bernadette Baum)