Nissan said it would be open to building Chinese vehicles in its Sunderland plant, just days after it announced cuts of 20,000 jobs and the closure of seven factories.
Ivan Espinosa, chief executive of Nissan, announced earlier this week that the Japanese carmaker was cutting jobs, closing factories and amending production schedules.
Nissan reported net losses of 670.9 billion yen or £3.4billion, despite selling 3.3 million units in the 2024-25 financial year.
Espinosa said the decision was "not easy" and said the brand would do all it could to support those impacted by the job losses and factory closures.
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Nissan's chief executive suggested that the Sunderland factory could produce Chinese cars
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Nissan's Sunderland factory is the brand's only European plant and a major employer in the North East with 6,000 staff members.
Nissan clarified that it would strengthen its presence in Sunderland by "assembling more electrified vehicles", following a major £2billion investment in 2023 to support the production of EVs.
Espinosa has now suggested that Sunderland could be chosen as a suitable location to build cars for its Chinese partner, Dongfeng.
Dongfeng is one of the "Big Four" manufacturers in China, with the Wuhan-based brand selling more than 765,000 vehicles last year.
This would allow Nissan to make the factory more profitable and even create new jobs. It comes as the Sunderland plant has been running under capacity in recent years.
While it manufactured 282,000 cars in 2024, this was a significant drop of 14 per cent compared to the previous year. This is also well below its total capacity of 600,000 cars.
Speaking about the possibility of manufacturing Chinese cars in the UK, Espinosa said: "We are quite open to collaborate with them.
"Everything is on the table. We could leverage some of our joint work outside of China, inviting them to come into our production ecosystems."
Nissan's partnership with Dongfeng includes a plant in Xiangyang, China
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He added that Nissan would be open to taking investment from other firms, although it would not "be hostages" to any one partner. Nissan previously looked at a merger with Japanese rival Honda.
It comes just weeks after Nissan's senior vice president for manufacturing, Alan Johnson, said the UK was not a competitive place for manufacturing.
He claimed that the Sunderland factory has the highest electricity cost of any Nissan plant in the world, in addition to the price of labour and training.
Johnson added: "Every time there is a piece of legislation that impacts on automotive, it needs to help us, not hinder us. It is difficult enough as it is at the moment. We need the market to be there."
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Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak at Nissan's Sunderland factory celebrating a £2billion electric vehicle investment in November 2023 PAThe original £2billion investment was met with praise from former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and ex-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who visited the plant in November 2023.
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