Hold the line
Nissan’s two-week Christmas shutdown provides vital breathing space to upgrade and improve its Sunderland plant, as JOHN EVANS discovers
PHOTOGRAPHY
JOHN BRADSHAW
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witch off your computer, turn out the lights, don’t leave any milk in the fridge: it’s the Christmas break, so goodbye
work, see you next year. But what if you’re leaving behind something rather bigger than an office – such as a car factory? Industry calls it the Christmas shutdown (well, what else were they going to name it?), and for car manufacturers such as Nissan, with its Sunderland production lines, it lasts two weeks – this year from Saturday 21 December to Sunday 5 January inclusive.
How do you switch off a production line? With a big red button that turns off the power, forcing the cars to a shuddery halt and leaving the assembly workers hanging in mid-operation? “Not exactly,” says Lee Watson, production director at the Sunderland plant. He joined Nissan in 1999, building the then new Almera, and has worked his way up through the ranks, so he knows a thing or two about making cars.