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Unifor, which represents about 3,000 laid-off workers at the factory near Toronto, said it met with Stellantis on Friday and the automaker would not confirm or deny the sale was final.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The Unifor union says it believes automaker Stellantis NV STLA-N has finalized the sale of its idled assembly plant in Brampton, Ont., to defence contractor Roshel Inc.
A source familiar with the matter said the sale of the plant is expected to be announced early next week. The source, whom The Globe and Mail is not identifying because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said the plan is for Stellantis to sell the plant to Brampton-based Roshel and lease it back for production purposes. The source declined to elaborate. It is not clear what Stellantis would do with the plant.
Unifor, which represents about 3,000 workers who were laid off almost three years ago at the factory near Toronto, said it met with the automaker Friday and the company would not confirm or deny the sale was final.
“Unifor is interpreting this refusal as confirmation that the Brampton Assembly Plant has been sold,” Lana Payne, Unifor’s national president, said in a statement to The Globe.
Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin said the automaker had “nothing to announce” on Friday afternoon.
Roshel declined to comment.
Stellantis extends shutdown of Windsor, Ont., plant as it weighs ‘evolving market conditions’
As part of the arrangement to sell the plant, Stellantis would also pay back money to the federal government it received to retool the facility after it closed in 2023, the source said.
Stellantis, which makes Dodge, Chrysler and several other brands, said in the summer it had a preliminary agreement to sell to Roshel. Stellantis repeated this in a statement to The Globe on Thursday.
The automaker planned to make the Jeep Compass at the factory but last year shifted this plan to its plant in Illinois. That angered the union and the federal government, which said Stellantis was violating the terms of its funding arrangement.
Unifor walked away from collective bargaining with Stellantis in September over the planned sale.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and the office of Industry Minister Mélanie Joly did not respond to The Globe’s e-mails.
Fraser Johnson, a professor at Western University’s Ivey School of Business, said the sale is apparently part of Stellantis’s efforts to solve its company-wide challenges. “Stellantis globally has huge problems with poor profits, low vehicle sales and too much capacity.”
The U.S. tariffs made the business case for operating the plant even more doubtful, Prof. Johnson said.
For Roshel, the sale is an attractive opportunity to purchase a world-class facility that rarely presents itself, he said.
But a plant operated by Roshel, which makes relatively small production runs of armoured vehicles, will not provide the same employment, supply chain purchases or other economic benefits as an auto assembly operation, Prof. Johnson said. “There’s a significant number of people affected by this.”