French auto group Renault intends to take measures to improve the competitiveness of the Dacia plant in Pitesti, said Nicolas Maure, general manager of Renault Romania.

Renault will increase within five years the plant’s automation degree by up to 20%, from the current 5%.

Although major car manufacturing plants in Western countries are automated by up to 90%, Renault doesn’t want to go too fast in this direction, to avoid a “tsunami” in terms of cutting jobs, Maure also said, cited by local Capital.ro.

He did not say whether the increasing automation will result in direct job cuts.

Renault also plans to keep salary increases steady and will not hire new staff to replace employees who leave. Some 14,000 of the 17,000 Renault employees in Romania work in the Dacia plant in Mioveni.

Its main competitor is the Renault plant in Tangier, Morocco, which assembles the same models as the local car plant. Dacia pays Romanian employees 2.5 times more than its employees in Morocco.

editor@romania-insider.com