AC cars closes Malta factory

AC cars have closed down their Malta factory, mostly owing to problems related to the factory premises, the company's chief engineer in Malta, John Owen has confirmed.

The factory was closed down earlier this year and 15 workers were laid off.

"We were going through a situation where it was not viable to keep the factory in its current state, and it was costing us a lot of money," Mr Owen said when replying to questions.

He did not wish to comment further as AC cars and Malta Enterprise are involved in court action. He said, however, that the company will also be instituting court action against a section of the media (not The Times/timesofmalta.com) over damaging and inaccurate articles.

The company came to Malta in 2004 and produced carbon fibre versions of the historic AC Cobra sports car. It also has a manufacturing plant in the UK.

Comments

Albert Bezzina (on 11/4/08)

If AC cars would have been given a chance to expand to a prominent manufacturing facility to produce a significant portion of the small volume of such cars delivered all over the world, Malta could have been placed on the mental map of car enthusiasts all over the world as AC cars is known throughout the world via its association with Carroll Shelby and the AC Cobra. Ug! But Malta is only concerned with extracting revenue from cars and our politicians (except Michael G) would be more interested in developing property rather than recognizing a bit of automotive history.

B. Hamilton (on 11/4/08)

Such stories really make me said. Nearly every week we read about Maltas last ranking in research and development in Europe. The we see that Malta Enterprise gives manufacturing companies LM200,000!

Just imagine they would have given that money to 20 small and innovative maltese companies!

If every company would have created one job we would have already 20 more jobs with a 20x higher chance that at least one of those companies grows faster and creates more jobs!

Every budget we hear about venture capital. But where is it? Is it given to all the car, bus and motorbike companies coming to Malta?

I hope next time Malta Enterprise asks google as well before they give such a sum away! This desaster would have been avoided with 5 minutes on google!

M Dingli (on 10/4/08)

What a shame.What was the factory's current state in ? The real loss is that People are now unemployed and Malta loses in the long term.