1 week Ago By Nicholas Maronese
Article content General Motors will idle its CAMI facility in Ingersoll, Ontario for five months as it tries to “balance inventory and align production schedules with current demand” for that assembly plant’s sole product, the all-electric Chevrolet BrightDrop commercial delivery van, the automaker said mid-April. The move will see roughly 1,200 workers laid off for the summer, according to the union representing GM workers there, Unifor, until production resumes in October with roughly 700 employees on the line. Temporary lay-offs will start April 14, GM said on April 11, though “limited production” would resume for part of May.
Unifor president Lana Payne called it “a crushing blow to hundreds of working families in Ingersoll and the surrounding region who depend on this plant” in a press release. General Motors said in a statement it “remains committed to the future of BrightDrop and the CAMI plant and will support employees through the transition.” It added that during the downtime it will retool the plant to build the updated 2026 version of the BrightDrop.
The automaker has to sell roughly 1,000 examples of the Chevy BrightDrop commercial vehicle per month in order to keep a single production shift employed, reports Automotive News ; the company sold fewer than 300 in the first quarter of 2025 in the U.S. and Canada , and moved fewer than 2,000 in both markets in all of 2024.
GM started production of the BrightDrop van in 2022 after it stopped building the Chevrolet Equinox there. “The unionized workforce faced months of downtime in both 2023 and 2024,” says Automotive News . “When the plant was operational, most staff were working part time, sharing a single shift of production.
” The outlet notes GM did not mention the ongoing U.S.-Canada trade wars in its announcing the plant’s temporary closure.
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