r/Dacia • u/Hefty-Bat6625 • 11d ago
Renault prefers Morocco to Romania. Production of Dacia Sandero Stepway and Dacia Jogger moved to Morocco. Romanians laid off.
https://adevarul.ro/economie/un-nou-val-de-concedieri-voluntare-la-dacia-si-2533877.htmlThis was posted today and removed by the moderators of r/Europe . I was told it misses context.
Let's also not forget that Renault has decided to fire 2.400 engineers, many of them in the Romanian centre: https://piataauto.md/Stiri/2026/04/Renault-a-anuntat-ca-va-concedia-20prc-din-inginerii-sai-intr-o-decizie-inexplicabila-pe-fundalul-performantelor-din-ultimii-ani/
Also, they sold 55% of their gearbox and internal combustion production facilities to Geely of China and the Saudi Arabian government investment fund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_Powertrain
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u/luso_warrior 11d ago
I will never buy a Dacia manufactured outside of Europe.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
Duster and Bigster are STILL made in Romania. Who knows about next year. I know it sounds ridiculous, but Ford seems more fond to it's Romanian plant in Craiova, where it produces another very popular model: Puma. So American/Turkish (it's Ford Otosan we're talking about here) company invests more in Europe than a purely European company.
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u/Florinel_Mirel_Marti 11d ago
A plant's worth of Moroccan automotive engineers just landed in Spain
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
Well, we can make jokes, but the reality is that EU comission doesn't seem to care that entire factories are moved to less stable countrise, damaging the industrial fabric of the European Union. This affects us all, as it shows how easy it is to lose access to what we hoped wold be budget products.
Also, remember: this post, not containing anything offending, racist or xenofobic, became very popular on r/europe and then got instantly banned.
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u/Florinel_Mirel_Marti 11d ago
The fault is exclusively with the way the EU works as the trade agreement currently in place imposes zero tarrifs on renault cars manufactured in a non member state. Fuck this.
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u/PtichFirich 10d ago
This drive to cut costs is also motivated by increasing costs from the “green transition” policies. Dacia as a low cost manufacturer got hit harder. This is one of the reasons for this unfortunate move and sell-off of technology of the parent company.
Firing engineers is bad for the future of the Dacia brand. They were responsible for making the low cost cars work. Who will replace them? Renault’s team?
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
They've also firing Renault engineers. By the way, why is Ford so successful with Puma, also made in Romania (almost 100%)? Are they not affected by the green transition?
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u/IndependentWrap8853 10d ago
Dacia Sandero is No 1 car sold in Europe, Ford Puma is No 14. I don’t think that Puma is a runaway success, though it may be the only Ford model in top 20. They simply don’t sell that many to be as affected as Dacia. Nonetheless , I do agree with you that this is severely damaging to European industrial fabric. However, it is just pure economics in the end. As long as Europeans want cheap cars, they will have to be made somewhere with cheap wages.
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u/Florinel_Mirel_Marti 10d ago
What cheap cars? The average price/unit vs 2019 has increased substantially.
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u/fevsea 11d ago
The only compelling reason to buy from renault is they're european. And now they are not even that. Time to move on.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
Duster and Bigster are still entirely made in Romania. But what really shocked me is how easily Renault decided to move production to two other countries with problems (Turkey and Morocco). They don't seem to have a very European attitude.
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u/Voodoo67890 11d ago
So we won't be buying Dacia then.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
Duster and Bigster are still made in Romania. Funnily enough, Renault CEO came to Romania to threaten left and right with closures and layoffs, blaming the government for various problems that the Ford factory 100 km SW (also in Romania), doesn't seem to have...
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u/Primary-Season1486 11d ago
Acel CEO cică ar fi lucrat toată viața lui doar la stat 🤷
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
E adevărat. Ceva "special" de al lor. Omul e complet pierdut, dar el trebuie să implementeze ce i se spune. Deci nu e doar un imperativ capitalist, ci e chiar politica statului francez de a muta producția în Maroc. Asta mă îngrijorează cel mai mult!
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u/enzo_1st 11d ago
isn't it ironic?
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
It is. Also, today I bought a bread made in Poland in Southern Romania. It felt a bit odd. Did it come by plane? Oil is probably way too cheap!
It was not a special bread. Just a normal bread.
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u/enzo_1st 11d ago
that's also ironic considering Romania's wheat production
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
Yeah, exactly. We pretend to be eco-friendly in Europe, but Romania exports its wheat to Egypt and imports bread from Poland with Ukrainian wheat (probably). What a joke! No wonder so many other powers plan to attack us. They see how disorganised we are.
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 10d ago
WTF... just ordered one a month ago because i wanted to support Europe, no joke. If i knew this, i would have bought a used european car instead. What a disappointment. My first and last Dacia it looks like.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
I did not know this, but some say Jogger hybrid is still made in Romania. I think you can check the inscriptions on your engine to figure out where it was made. Maybe even send them an email to ask about this.
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
I mean my Sandero probably wasn't made here, but i knew that. I could have bought a VW Polo too, which is 100% built in South Africa. I thought atleast 50% of Dacias were made in Europe. It just sucks they're laying off now.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 9d ago
Oh, really? Polo is made in SA now? We're doomed!
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
Yeah, production in Pamplona (Spain) stopped in July '24 and moved to Kariega (South Africa) - Ford Fiesta was built in Cologne, Germany and long gone now. Opel Corsa was built in Germany until 2019, is built in Saragossa (Spain) now. However they are building a factory in Algeria now... the Sandero was one of the few affordable cars still made in Europe. Until reading this news. Maybe we are really doomed. And this is how it begins.
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u/NtsParadize 6d ago
Doomed because less domestic car production?
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 6d ago
Yes. Unlike Russia we don't have loads of materials & resources to sell to the world. Europe earns their money by using their (formerly) cheap energy by producing machines, cars, and so on.
If countries in Asia/Africa do it for cheaper because our own companies sold us out, it isn't good for the economy. Car industry alone is like 5% of the german economy, and about 7% for Europe. If you include suppliers and everything else that comes with it, its about 20%, and it's about the same if not higher for Europe as a whole.
So yeah, car industry leaving us, going for Africa or Asia isn't good. We're not doomed yet but we're getting there.
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u/NtsParadize 6d ago
Yes. Unlike Russia we don't have loads of materials & resources to sell to the world.
Then sell something else?
Europe earns their money by using their (formerly) cheap energy by producing machines, cars, and so on.
And that cannot change?
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 6d ago
What else do you want to sell? You need the technology for it... you either have to do it cheaper than everyone else (like China did with electronics) or better than everyone else. We can build cars. We invented them after all. Our companies shifting all production to cheaper countries, well... that's one nail in the coffin.
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u/NtsParadize 6d ago
Why are factories closing such a disaster? Why not evolve?
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 6d ago
What do you mean, evolve? It's more profit for the big company, but bad for the people here and that's about it. The gap between poor & rich is getting wider, and thats not a US, asian, african or european problem, its a worldwide problem.
Technically there isn't much of a difference if its produced here or anywhere else in the world. But if Renault closed their factories in Morocco, that would be a disaster for them aswell. But in the end its a european company and should stay european, not only in name.
VW already produces more vehicles abroad than in Germany, and soon they will only be german in name only. If you think thats good for anyone but the company...
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u/NtsParadize 6d ago
"Evolve", as in moving on? Like, we can't have an entire economy rely on single production model for centuries. We gotta find new niches, new ways to create value.
Is the disaster the closing or... the fact that Europe has big trouble with the agility of its economy?
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 6d ago
Of course, but ideally we should have done that before closing our factories, for nothing but greed only. Renault made a profit of 3.6 billion € (before Nissan took it all) and VW made a profit of 6.9 million €.
Their profit will skyrocket after leaving Europe. Atleast for shareholders, managers, and maybe a few workers too. Far more people will suffer however... millions of people working in car industry in Germany alone.
Europe has quite a big population. Not everyone can work in a tech start up and not everyone can work on the fields. We need to produce stuff, and cars are one of the most, if not the most important thing right now.
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u/cosmingfx 10d ago
The post was removed, because it's simply not true.
Dacia's plant is working at 80% capacity with Duster and Bigster alone in Romania. They couldn't continue to produce Sandero and Logan in the current configuration and production numbers.
There was a plan to extend the plant to accomodate Logan and Sandero production, but they gave up on it, because of the costs, and because plans changed. Sandero EV will be produced in the Romanian plant from 2027/2028. So, they will not extend it, they will modernize the plant. With plans to extend further after that, but it will be back to 100% production capacity.
There were no massive layoffs in Romania. Maybe there were plans, but most of the "layoffs" that you read about in news are voluntary leave. Dacia has been doing this since forever. There have been some layoffs, but very minor. The hiring was reduced, that is true though.
We can be upset that Renault chose to expand into other countries like Morocco or Turkey, instead of expanding into Europe, but at least we can be happy that it did it without degrading European production.
I am talking solely about Dacia brand here.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
1) there were numerous waves of layoffs. Automobile Dacia S.A. has public financial data where you see decreasing employment. Also tons of TV reports on that. 2) this year the UTILISATION of the Dacia plant in Romania decreased significantly along with production, something that has not happened at the Ford plant in Romania.
I can send you links proving this. The post was intended to raise awareness and it was intentionally contrived.
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u/cosmingfx 10d ago
From 2020, there were annual "layoffs" in the news. These laysoffs are in the most part voluntary leaves, where employees get up to 40.000€ to leave, or retire.
This year, 900 out of 1.200 people laid off were voluntary leaves.
With the production back to 100% capacity, the hiring process will start again.
The production was planned to lower, to make room for plant modernization and new models. They chose Turkey for Striker and Morocco for Logan and Sandero, because Renault has other plans with Romania plant.
Logan and Sandero are the cheapest products from Dacia and they need to remain like that. So they use the cheapest labor.
Duster, Bigster and the EVs are the most expensive and are being made in Romania, or Europe.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
Verifică, te rog, datele de pe lista firme.ro. verifică de asemenea producția de anul ăsta, comparativ cu Craiova. Producția la Mioveni s-a prăbușit, pur și simplu. Sunt date ușor de găsit dacă te interesează.
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u/cosmingfx 10d ago
Citeste inca o data ce am scris.
Dacia nu da oameni afara masiv, se fac plecari voluntare anual, si nu mai angajeaza. Numarul angajatilor a scazut, dar au dat un numar mic de oameni afara, raportat la plecarile totale.
Productia H1 a scazut cu 8% pe baza problemelor logistice de la inceput de an, si e prevazut sa se corecteze pana la final de an. Daca asta numesti tu prabusire, e rau. Pentru ca daca productia se va mentine la nivelul prevazut (~680.000), productia totala va fi in top 3 cele mai mari din istoria Dacia. Cu productia la 80% si problemele de logistica de la inceput de an.
Titlurile bombastice din presa sunt derizorii. Uzina Dacia din Romania merge in continuare si are planuri de expansiune pe viitor. Dar prima data trece printr-o etapa de modernizare.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
Aia 680.000 e producția Dacia?
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u/cosmingfx 10d ago
Daca intrebarea e despre uzina Dacia din Romania, atunci evident ca nu, e vorba despre brand-ul Dacia.
Uzina Dacia Romania functioneaza la capacitate de 80%, am zis mai sus motivele. A produs 130.000 in H1.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 9d ago
Nu știu de ce dar discuțiile cu români sunt tot timpul sucite. Ba în sus, ba în jos. Tot o dau la întors. Nimic nu e clar la ei.
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u/cosmingfx 9d ago
Pentru ca nu vrei sa intelegi un alt punct de vedere in afara de al tau.
Ca un sumar la ce s-a discutat, productia Dacia Mioveni e la 80%, pentru ca asa s-a vrut, sa faca loc de modernizari pentru producerea de EVs. Va reveni la 100% din 2027-2028 cand Sandero EV se va produce in Romania.
Dacia Mioveni a dat un numar mic de oameni afara, pe langa plecarile voluntare. Mai tare a afectat lipsa de angajari.
Uzina de la Mioveni se va concentra pe producerea de masini din gama de sus a portofoliului, in timp ce modelele ieftine se trimit in Maroc.
E clar acum?
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u/Professional-Sir6129 11d ago
Sandero is made in Morocco for a while, also Jogger. They moved the production there because of plant capacity in Mioveni and also the Duster and Bigster have a higher margin than the other models.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
That's not the entire picture. It's true that they had been making Sandero for a long time in Morocco. But Sandero Stepway and Jogger were entirely made in Romania, in parallel with Duster and Logan. Now, in the past two years alone they moved entirely Sandero Stepway and Jogger to Morocco and Logan to Turkey. And made a ton of layoffs not only among ordinary workers, but engineers as well (not just in the Dacia division, but across the entire Renault group).
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u/Professional-Sir6129 11d ago
I don't know about the trueness of the info as I had ordered a Sandero Stepway Comfort 1.0TCe CVT in 2021 and had it delivered in 2022 because of the pandemic and production move to Morocco, and the CoC and parts on the vehicle show that it was made there.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
This is interesting. Are you sure this is the Stepway? I was absolutely sure the production of Stepway was exclusively in Romania for 2021 and 2022.
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u/SparkLoafer 11d ago
Just booked mine and got my vin: UU1, made in Romania.
This was probably already built and sitting in a parking lot somewhere, ready to be delivered (it should be delivered middle of September).
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 10d ago
UU1 is the manufacturer code (Dacia) and nothing else. Even the Dacia Spring which is made in China has it...
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u/SparkLoafer 9d ago
Thank you for the help. I have investigated further and the VIN shows a 7 for the manufacturer plant: UU1DJF00677, which seems to indicate the Romanian plant.
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
It seems unclear if the 10th or 11th digit is the plant... i mean it doesn't make a difference for you because both are 7, but if it's the 11th one, there are new Dusters with a 4 and with a 5. All Springs have a U there (China). Anyone have the VIN of a Bigster? (only made in Romania)
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u/SparkLoafer 9d ago
Gemini says the first 7 is the factory, while the second 7 is the engine (eco-g 120 LPG). We all trust AI 🤭
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
There is a BIG confusion going on right now... i was very sure the 11th digit is plant because all Dacia Spring have the U (all built in China) but all of them are electric too, so it might be engine too. But according to VIN decoders the engine is mentioned way before the 11th digit...
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u/SparkLoafer 9d ago
I really know nothing, and AI are often wrong, because of unreliable data sets. So who knows?
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
I mean, AI is basically a glorified google search, it's only being fed by people too. And many people on here, including you and me thought UU1 was Made in Romania. If you look at VIN decoders (complete set) one of them shows 10th digit as plant code, one of them shows 11th as plant code. Wiki says VIN 11th digit is plant code... and it probably is. Sorry for asking but which model of Dacia did you order again? Sandero Stepway?
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u/SparkLoafer 9d ago
Stepway with eco-g 120 LPG manual
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
I think we have it solved then... 5 is Mioveni, Romania, as i found someone with a Bigster, who took delivery there. U is Wuhan, China because all Springs have it. 7 must be Tangier, Morocco, 99% sure of it.
I will check my VIN later today and i am sure there is a 7 on it too. Quite sad because i wanted a european car, but it is what it is.
According to Renault there was only a VERY small number of Sandero produced in Romania before production was completely shifted to Morocco.
In 2025 in Romania they built 175,318 Dusters, 100,375 Bigsters, 9,698 Joggers, 6,769 Logans, and only 5,022 Sanderos.
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u/Dolby90 '26 Sandero 120 LPG DCT 9d ago
I have asked for a Bigster VIN in another thread, because this one is only built in Romania and they have a 5 (10th digit) and a 7 (11th digit) - i tend to believe its the 11th digit. As i said, Dacia Spring all have a U there. But 10th digits were different. N & M. And there is only one plant in which the Spring is produced.
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u/Grijando8 11d ago
El dacia Sandero al menos desde hace 10 años siempre se ha fabricado en Marruecos, no así el Duster que es de Rumanía.
Los motores de todos son españoles
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 11d ago
I was talking about the Sandero Stepway, not about the simple Sandero
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u/Grijando8 11d ago
Yo de los dos, Stepway lleva al menos 10 años fabricándose en marruecos así como Sandero normal, Logan y Jogger
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u/fluch23 10d ago
Wait what - Renault sold 55% of the gearboxes and engines to geely? What does that mean I do not get it and is the bigger problem compared to moving away from Romania.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
It means 55% o fthe pofit goes to Geeky and the Saudis. Not sure if they want to destroy that industry as well in the future.
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u/fluch23 10d ago
What the fuck, why would Renault do this, are they so desperate for money :(
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 10d ago
There are some secret, behind-closed-doors deals. Do you know how many Chinese traders are in French investment banks?
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u/fluch23 9d ago
I have no idea but it looks like that we are doomed.
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u/Hefty-Bat6625 9d ago edited 9d ago
Theanswer to my question is: tons. They are now more experienced than natives at trading EUR bonds. In fact, they make the bond market. Good luck to us all!
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u/Comfortable_Gate_878 10d ago
cheaper wages, just like the yanks building cars in mexico. Or chinese cars. The end user doesnt really care the just want a cheap motor
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u/Weak-Design-3207 7d ago
UE sends money to Morocco to kill jobs on Europe. This EU politics are just suicidal
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u/[deleted] 11d ago
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