Fiat extends summer shutdown at plant Fiat is to extend the traditional summer shutdown at its Pomigliano plant by almost two weeks due to falling demand for cars in Italy and elsewhere in western Europe. The Italian carmaker on Wednesday said that it would halt production at the factory near Naples from Monday until the end of August. Pomigliano, Fiat's most advanced factory, has 2,150 employees turning out 700 of the group's Panda cars a day. At full capacity the plant would employ almost 5,000 people and produce 1,050 cars a day. Fiat, which this month warned it might have to close a plant in Italy if it does not get concessions from workers on hours and shift patterns, said it would monitor the situation at the Pomigliano plant. "The figures for the European auto market, and in particular the Italian market, confirm there is no hint that the sales crisis will end soon," Fiat said. In Italy the market, which is at the level it was in 1979, is penalising Fiat above all in the city car segment where the company has a 60 per cent market share with the Panda and 500. While the Panda and the 500 are the best selling cars in Europe in their segment and have a combined 28 per cent market share, Fiat has been penalised by its overexposure to Italy where the economy is contracting and banks are reluctant to lend money to consumers. Car sales in Italy, where Fiat has almost a third of the market, dropped by almost a quarter in June and by a fifth in the first half of the year. European car sales fell 6.3 per cent in the first half. Sergio Marchionne, Fiat's chief executive, said two weeks ago that he expected European car sales to be stuck at about 14m a year for the next two to three years and that if that happens there will be one factory too many in Italy. To avoid that closure, he wants to have Italian plants producing cars for Fiat's US unit Chrysler, but to be able to do that the cost of labour has to come down in Italy. Pomigliano has recently gone through an €800m makeover, making it unlikely that Fiat would choose to shut it. The most likely candidates for closures are the Cassino plant between Rome and Naples and the Melfi plant east of Naples, according to Massimo Vecchio, an analyst with Mediobanca Securities in Milan.