Stellantis to Sell Its Idled Brampton Plant to Roshel: Capacity Utilization and OEE

News, 14 November 2026. Every news figure below comes from a linked source, and the full list is at the end.

What Stellantis and Roshel announced on 9 November 2026

The joint press release, filed by Stellantis with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, sets out the agreement.

• Deal: an asset purchase agreement under which Roshel acquires the Brampton Assembly Plant and its associated equipment; the price is undisclosed.
• Timing: expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to closing conditions including government and regulatory requirements.
• Plans: Roshel plans a centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing, and the companies set out a framework for possible cooperation in defence-related vehicle technologies.
• Capacity target: Stellantis cites a target of about 80% capacity utilization across North America in 2030.
• Workers: the release refers to three years of paid layoff for Brampton workers and says Stellantis remains prepared to negotiate a settlement with the union Unifor.

Just Auto covered the deal on 10 November. The release does not say what Roshel will build, how many people it will employ or the size of the plant, so we make no claim about any of them.

The numbers behind the news

The release itself has few numbers. The table adds Statistics Canada's latest readings on how full Canadian factories are, so the 80% target has some context.

Sources: Stellantis and Roshel release; Statistics Canada, Monthly Survey of Manufacturing, August 2026 and June 2026.

The national rate and the Stellantis target are not the same measure. Statistics Canada covers all Canadian manufacturing; the 80% target is one carmaker's assembly network across North America, four years out. Still, they share a logic: a plant that sits empty pulls the average down, and selling it removes that capacity from the base.

The national figures moved up over the year, from 78.4% in June 2025 to 82.3% in June 2026, while transportation equipment fell 2.9 points in a single month. Car and parts sales both fell about 4% in August. Statistics Canada linked the August drop partly to weaker seasonal sales and an extended summer shutdown at a major assembly plant, without naming it. None of these figures shows how much of Brampton's capacity Stellantis counted, or what the sale does to its own rate.

Background: an idle plant in a busy sector

The release puts the sale in the plain terms of capacity. Stellantis says it targets about 80% capacity utilization across North America in 2030, and its chief executive says Brampton workers have been on paid layoff for three years. Stellantis still employs more than 10,000 people in Canada, according to the release. The buyer, Roshel, is based in Brampton and says it has deployed more than 2,500 vehicles to Ukraine. It plans a centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing on the site.

The union sees the deal differently. In a statement of 17 October 2025, Unifor's Stellantis Council, which says it represents more than 8,000 members at Stellantis sites in Canada, opposed the decision announced on 14 October 2025 to move future Jeep Compass production from Brampton to the United States. On the day of the sale, Unifor said the company went ahead despite being in violation of the collective agreement. Its national president, Lana Payne, said a plan to keep the plant in Canada's auto footprint "was possible". The release, for its part, says Stellantis remains committed to working with Unifor on a resolution. We take no side; both positions are on the record.

The idle plant sits in an industry that was busy overall. Statistics Canada reports that transportation equipment sales rose 14.7% to CAD 36.0 billion in the second quarter of 2026, and that manufacturing sales across all sectors reached CAD 235.1 billion that quarter, up 9.3%. By August the mood had cooled: transportation equipment sales fell for a second month in a row, to CAD 12.0 billion.

For suppliers, that mix is the lesson. National averages can rise while one customer plant stands still. A supplier's own loading depends on the specific plants and programmes it ships to, not on the sector average.

What it means for automotive and supplier plants

A carmaker selling an idle assembly plant while setting a utilization target shows how closely automakers watch capacity. An idle plant costs money whether or not it builds anything; a plant running well below its capacity spreads its fixed costs over too few vehicles.

Utilization is only half of the picture. It compares output with installed capacity, so it mixes two things: how much time a line is planned to run, often called loading, and how well that time is used. Inside the planned time, lines still lose hours to changeovers, stops, slow running and scrap. That second part is what OEE measures. A plant can report high utilization and still ship far less than its schedule suggests.

We have no view of how Stellantis or Roshel will run their plants and make no guess about it.

Loading, OEE and utilization: a worked example

Example data, not Stellantis'. A supplier line with 168 hours available in a week.

Planned time is 168 x 80% = 134.4 hours. At 65% OEE, the line turns 134.4 x 65% = 87.4 hours into good output, about 52% of what its installed capacity could make in the week, which is its utilization in this example. Raising OEE to 75% adds 134.4 x 10% = 13.4 good hours a week without changing the shift plan.

Planning capacity across shifts and lines? Book a demo and see OEE and lost hours per line and shift.

What it means for plant, production and maintenance managers

Plant managers: when a customer plant goes quiet

If a customer plant you supply stops building, your lines lose loading overnight while their fixed costs stay. The decisions are about footprint and people. Can the volume that remains move onto fewer lines or fewer shifts? Can idle lines take work for other customers, and how long would the approvals take? Paid layoff, retention and severance all have a cost, and so does losing skilled people you will need when volume returns. Write down the break-even loading for each line, below which it costs more to keep it running than to move its parts elsewhere. When a plant and its equipment change hands, as at Brampton, nearby suppliers may also see new demand for parts, tooling or services; treat that as a lead to qualify, not a forecast.

Production managers: fewer hours, kept honest

Low loading changes how the week should be built. Often it is better to run two full shifts on one line than three half-loaded shifts across two lines, because changeovers, start-ups and warm-up scrap are paid every time a line restarts. Keep idle hours out of OEE: if there are no orders, that time is not planned, and counting it as downtime hides the real losses inside the shifts that do run. Re-set OEE targets per line when the plan changes, and track loading next to them so the two are not confused. When volume comes back, plan the ramp: crews need refresher training, and the first shifts after a long gap tend to lose more to stops and quality checks.

Maintenance managers: mothballing and restarting

An idle line does not stay in good condition on its own. Hydraulic seals dry out, unpainted surfaces rust and backup batteries in PLCs and robot controllers run flat, which can wipe programs or positions. Write a mothball procedure for each asset: drain or circulate fluids, protect bare metal, keep the cabinets dry, and run motors and pumps on a set interval. Do not take parts from idle machines to fix running ones without a record, or the idle line will not restart when needed. Keep a condition file per asset, with hours, last PM and open faults; it matters if the equipment is ever moved or sold. Plan the restart as a commissioning job, with checks before production, not as a normal Monday start-up.

Three steps to read loading, OEE and utilization together

1. Report loading and OEE per line. Loading for how much time you plan to run, OEE for how well that time is used; together they explain utilization. Our guide to capacity utilization covers the formula.
2. Decide which one to move first. Adding shifts raises loading; fixing stops and changeovers raises OEE. Both raise utilization, and the second is often cheaper.
3. Set targets on good hours. Planned hours x OEE gives the good hours a line delivers; plan customers on that. For supplier lines, see OEE for automotive tier 1 suppliers.

What to do this quarter

• Map parts to customer plants. List every part number by the assembly plant it ships to, and its share of your revenue. Owner: plant manager with sales.
• Report loading and OEE side by side. One line per row, monthly, so a falling plan is never read as falling performance.
• Set a consolidation trigger. If a line runs below 50% loading for three months in a row, test moving its volume to a sister line.
• Write mothball procedures. One page per idle asset, with a monthly run or check, owned by the maintenance manager.
• Keep asset condition files. Hours, last PM and open faults for each machine, updated monthly; they speed up any transfer or sale.
• Measure restarts separately. After any idle period over two weeks, track the first ten shifts' OEE and stop reasons as a ramp, not as normal running.
• Protect key skills. Cross-train at least two people per shift on each critical machine before any layoff decision.

Where OEE and light MES help

OEE shows how much planned time becomes good parts, and the reasons show where the rest goes. A light MES adds orders, part numbers and shift plans, so loading, OEE and utilization can be read side by side for each line.

Which OEE factor does an idle plant touch? Strictly, none: idle time with no orders sits outside planned time. The risk is that it leaks into availability when it is logged as downtime. The factor that suffers in practice is availability on restart, when long-idle machines fail more often.

Example data. A parts line has 168 hours in the week, 100 planned and 85 running, so availability is 85 / 100 = 85%. With 90% performance and 98% quality, OEE is 0.85 x 0.90 x 0.98 = 75.0%. If the 68 unplanned hours are logged as downtime, availability looks like 85 / 168 = 50.6%, and the same line appears to run at 0.506 x 0.90 x 0.98 = 44.6%. That 44.6% is a valid number, total effective equipment performance, but it measures the plan, not the line: 100 / 168 = 59.5% loading x 75.0% OEE = 44.6%.

In money (Example data). Assume each good production hour earns a contribution of $2,000 and the line carries $80,000 of fixed cost a week. At 100 planned hours and 75.0% OEE, it makes 75 good hours: 75 x $2,000 = $150,000, or $70,000 after fixed cost. If the customer cuts the plan to 60 hours, good hours fall to 45: $90,000, or $10,000 after fixed cost. Break-even is $80,000 / ($2,000 x 75%) = 53.3 planned hours, or 31.7% loading (53.3 / 168). Raise OEE to 80% and break-even drops to $80,000 / ($2,000 x 80%) = 50 hours. That is the number a supplier needs before deciding whether to keep a half-empty line.

How Fabrico does it

Fabrico is a cloud OEE and light MES platform. It shows OEE and losses by machine, line and shift from the PLC or a Fabrico IoT device, with the reasons operators add on a tablet or phone. On manual assembly stations, AI cameras (an add-on) count output. We have no link to Stellantis or Roshel; the figures above are from their release.

Setting next year's capacity targets? Book a demo.

What people ask next

Who is buying the Stellantis Brampton Assembly Plant?

Roshel, a defence vehicle maker, under an asset purchase agreement for the plant and its associated equipment, according to the joint release of 9 November 2026. The price was not disclosed.

When will the Brampton plant sale close?

The companies expect it to close by the end of 2026, subject to closing conditions including government and regulatory requirements.

What is the difference between capacity utilization and OEE?

Capacity utilization compares output with what installed capacity could make. OEE measures how well the time a line is planned to run turns into good output. Loading, the share of time planned to run, times OEE gives utilization in time terms. See our guide to capacity utilization.

How many people does Stellantis employ in Canada?

More than 10,000, according to the Stellantis and Roshel release of 9 November 2026. The release also says Brampton workers have been on paid layoff for three years and that Stellantis remains committed to working with Unifor on a resolution.

How full are Canadian factories in 2026?

Statistics Canada reports that manufacturing capacity utilization rose from 80.7% in July to 81.9% in August 2026. In June 2026 the rate was 82.3%, up from 78.4% a year earlier, not seasonally adjusted.

What is the difference between OEE and TEEP?

OEE measures how well planned time turns into good output. TEEP measures good output against all calendar time, so it equals loading times OEE. A line with 59.5% loading and 75% OEE has a TEEP of about 44.6%.

Sources

All sources accessed on 14 November 2026. Dates are the publication dates shown on each page.

• Stellantis and Roshel, joint press release (Form 6-K, Exhibit 99.1, US SEC), 9 November 2026
• Just Auto, coverage of the Stellantis Brampton plant sale to Roshel, 10 November 2026
• Statistics Canada, The Daily, Monthly Survey of Manufacturing, August 2026, 15 October 2026
• Statistics Canada, The Daily, Monthly Survey of Manufacturing, June 2026, 14 August 2026
• Unifor, Sale of Brampton Assembly Plant a betrayal by Stellantis, 9 November 2026
• Unifor, Unifor Stellantis Council statement on Brampton Assembly Plant, 17 October 2025