Lawrence Stroll Admits Causing $460,000,000 Worth Trouble for Aston Martin With His Decision

Canadian Billionaire Lawrence Stroll made waves in the world of cars when he took over Aston Martin in 2020 and became the chairman of the company. Since then he’s made immense efforts of making a turnaround and getting the company back on track. However, Stroll has failed to do so, and on top of that, he made some shocking revelations about a decision that cost the company over $460 Million.

Stroll made the revelation during a media session that he had planned at the Monaco Grand Prix. During the Grand Prix weekend, Stroll invited over 30 journalists on his yacht and gave them interviews. The journalists were also provided with Aston Martin cars to drive for an extended period.

The PR stunt worked out and Aston Martin saw a plethora of positive stories about them being spread around. However, some journalists, including Mark Tisshaw of Autocar Business posed some difficult questions to Stroll. And to the surprise of them all, Stroll took the questions head-on and made the revelations about his aforementioned decision.

Lawrence Stroll failed to take a tough decision for Aston Martin

The whole issue revolves around the fact that Aston Martin has two factories in the UK. One of them is based in Gaydon in England. The other one is situated in St. Athan in Wales.

With the two factories working in full force, Aston Martin has the capability to produce 20,000 cars per year. However, the company has plans of producing only 9,000-10,000 cars per year, and as per The Guardian they only managed to sell 6,400 cars in 2022.

This means that they have an extra factory to run and this increases the overhead costs for the company. Aston Martin is losing $72,000 per car in overhead costs. Put it all together for the 6,400 cars that they have sold and the number racks up to over $450 million a year.

When Stroll took over the company, it was expected that he would take a decision to shut down one of the factories. However, he failed to do so and even admitted to the journalists in Monaco that if it were up to him, he would not have opened the extra factory at St. Athan. However, Stroll also admitted that he could not make the decision to close the factory to save the extra overheads for the company.

The future of the Aston Martin factories

Lawrence Stroll made it clear that the company would use the factory at Gaydon as its main base. And as for the St. Athan factory, a solution would be made for it when Geely takes over Aston Martin sometime in the future.

It is understood that the Chinese car manufacturer will use the factory at St. Athan for the assembly of their electric vehicles for the European market. If all of the car production moves to one factory, Aston Martin would immediately become profitable as a company.