Nissan to cut 11,000 more jobs and shut seven factories

Nissan has said it will cut another 11,000 jobs globally as it shakes up the business in the face of weak sales in its key markets of the US and China.

It brings the total number of layoffs announced by Japan’s third-biggest car maker in the last year to about 20,000, or 15% of its workforce.

It was not immediately clear where the job cuts will be made, but the carmaker said it would reduce the number of its plants from 17 to 10 by 2027.

Nissan currently employs about 133,500 people globally, with about 6,000 workers at its manufacturing operations in Sunderland.

The layoffs come on top of 9,000 job cuts Nissan announced in November as part of a cost saving effort that it said would reduce its global production by a fifth.

In February, talks between Nissan and its larger rival Honda collapsed after the firms failed to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up.

The merger would have created a $60bn (£46bn) motor industry giant, the fourth largest in the world by vehicle sales after Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai.

After the failure of the negotiations, then-chief executive Makoto Uchida was replaced by Ivan Espinosa, the company’s chief planning officer and head of its motorsports division.