20:09 30-07-2026
Nissan Qashqai: rear axles from Spain, final assembly stays in Sunderland
Nissan has awarded its Ávila plant the Qashqai rear axle. Preparation starts in September 2026 and series production in the first quarter of 2028. Final assembly of the crossover stays in Sunderland.
Nissan has awarded its Spanish plant in Ávila the contract to build the rear axle of the Qashqai. Stamping, assembly of the unit and shipping will all happen in Spain, while the crossover itself keeps rolling off the line in Sunderland, UK. Preparatory work starts in September 2026 and series production of the axles is scheduled for the first quarter of 2028. The new workload should create 40 to 50 jobs, with the exact figure depending on final volumes.
The company presented the project in Spain on 23 July. Ávila will handle the full production cycle: from stamping the parts to final assembly of the unit and dispatch to the UK. It will be the first series component the plant supplies to Nissan’s Sunderland site. For a factory that specialises in spare parts, it is only the second component for a current model — until now Ávila built the engine subframe for the Renault Austral made in Palencia.
The nature of the project is worth reading correctly: Nissan is not moving Qashqai assembly to Spain and is not opening a new vehicle line there. Ávila stays a components plant — back in 2017 it was converted from building commercial vehicles to making parts. The company has not disclosed the investment, the annual output of rear axles or the list of Qashqai versions the Spanish parts are meant for.
The backdrop is a heavy one. A week earlier, on 16 July, it emerged that Renault is ending its orders at Nissan’s plants in Ávila and Cantabria in December 2026. Ávila takes the hardest hit: by the company’s own account the French partner accounts for around half of the plant’s workload, and 450 people are employed there, while some sources put the share as high as 60%. In Cantabria, Renault accounts for just 5–6%, so the break will barely be felt.
The Qashqai project removes part of the uncertainty for the site, but it brings no immediate series work: between Renault’s exit in December 2026 and the first axles in early 2028 there is more than a year of transition. Estimates of the losses differ too: the works council spoke of roughly a hundred people out of 450, while the trade title La Tribuna de Automoción put the surplus at 200–250 staff if no new customers are found. On that second count, the new axle covers about a fifth of the problem.
Sunderland keeps its key role in Nissan’s European strategy, but its own plans are being redrawn as well. In the second half of 2026 the plant is merging two underused lines into one: in 2025 it built 273,174 cars, against more than half a million in 2019. Nissan is offering the freed-up line to outside manufacturers — in June it signed a non-binding memorandum with China’s Chery on contract assembly from the 2027 financial year.
Some investment projects in Sunderland have been dropped altogether. Jatco walked away from an electric powertrain plant worth £48.7 million (about $65 million), sized for 340,000 units a year and 183 jobs. And in June Reuters reported that Nissan had halted development of an electric Qashqai. The rear axles from Ávila belong to the existing crossover programme and do not mean a return of the cancelled EV investments — but they do show that the Qashqai stays in Nissan’s production plans beyond 2028.
The scale of the model explains the choice of project: in July Nissan reported four million Qashqai sold in Europe since 2006. Over that time the crossover has collected more than 110 international awards, including 20 “Car of the Year” titles in various countries: it is designed in London, engineered in Cranfield and Barcelona, and built in Sunderland. Nissan has not yet named the output of the new Spanish operation, so it is too early to judge its effect on the cost of the crossover.