Aston Martin has cut 170 jobs after losses widened by a fifth last year and fewer cars were sold in 2023 following a string of supply chain issues and production delays.
The luxury auto manufacturer, which has its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, said it planned to axe 5% of the workforce as part of cost-cutting measures to return to profit.
All of the company’s departments have been hit, including manufacturing, office jobs and management.
In a statement on Wednesday, the company said the aim was to make sure the company was “appropriately resourced for its future plans”, and called the cuts a “difficult but necessary action”.
Aston Martin – famous for making fictional spy James Bond’s cars – said it was targeting yearly savings of £25m and expected to hit about half of that total this year.
Since it was bought by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll in 2020, the company has pushed on with a swathe of new model launches in a bid to turn its ailing fortunes around.
Adrian Hallmark was appointed the company’s new chief executive in September amid a ramping up of sales of its new Vantage and DBX707 models, which it said helped boost production volumes.
The company also launched its flagship Vanquish model in September.
Aston Martin said the launches helped boost sales later in the year as it started delivering more of the new models to customers, with wholesale volumes picking up 10% year on year in the second half compared with 2023.
But the company’s wholesale volumes for the whole year were still down 9% at 6,030 cars, pushing its pre-tax losses to gape by a further 21% to £289 million.
It also saw its debt pile rise by 43% to £1.16bn during the year, while shares were down about 33% over the last year.
Mr Hallmark said it was “a period of intense product launches, coupled with industry-wide and company challenges”.
He said he wanted Aston Martin to “transition from a high-potential business to a high-performing one, better equipped to navigate future opportunities and uncertainties”.
