The country's largest bodywork factory announced the closure and dismissal of 600 workers

Metalpar, the most important bodywork factory for collectives in Argentinaannounced today at noon closing your doors, whereby will lay off some 600 workers, between operators and personnel who performed tasks of cleaning, security, meals and maintenance, with the corresponding remuneration.

This is the plant that the group – a joint venture between Metalúrgica Paredes, which is Chilean, and the Brazilian Marcopolo – has in Loma Hermosa, where it produced bodies for urban groups. According to sources in the auto parts industry who supplied parts, interest rates strongly affected the renewal of units by collective and this affected the business of Metalpar.

It has been verified that the owners are analyzing the continuous production, but in a smaller volume and on another plant they have. Metalpar is the leading company in the country of bodywork for groups. It even produced up to 12 per day.

The company had already reduced personnel last year, and this triggered alarms in the union and the different actors in the sector, who asked the national government for concrete measures to get reactivated. "As they say in the jargon, the collective is paid by cutting tickets, so if you can not get funding, you can not renew the unit," said a source who provided Metalpar. He added: "It's a business with a high dependency on credit."

The owners of Metalpar are also owners of Metalsur, based in Villa Gobernador Gálvez, which produces bodies for long-distance groups.. The group bought 51% of Santa Fe's firm in 2012 and also last year showed serious production problems and made suspensions. Anyway, what closes is that of Loma Hermosa.

This closure is one of many companies that have been going on in recent months due to the sharp drop in demand. Some companies have tried, over the course of 2018, to support the decline in sales with suspensions, elimination of production shifts, cost reductions, voluntary withdrawals and even layoffs. But in some cases the numbers do not close anymore and they have no choice but to close their doors.

The number of companies that started to fire workers more heavily and / or apply for the Preventive Crisis Procedure (PPP) to the Ministry of Labor was also sharply increased. According to data of the work portfolio, in 2018 146 PPPs were presented and during the two months of 2019, 21.

The concern of the companies is growing and there are many doubts about the possibilities that in the second semester the economic cycle will win the turn and the GDP begins to recover.