A Car-Parts Foundry in Oliveira de Azeméis Lays Off All 318 Workers, Seven Months After Its Managers Bought It Out of Insolvency

Schmidt Light Metal, an aluminium die-casting plant in Oliveira de Azeméis, in the Aveiro district, has stopped production and is dismissing its whole workforce of 318 people, Jornal de Notícias reported, in an account carried by Jornal de Negócios on Tuesday. All work stopped on 30 September, management has told staff the factory will close by the end of the year, and most contracts end on 7 December.

Workers were told of the despedimento coletivo (collective dismissal) in August, one employee who asked not to be named told the newspaper. They are serving their notice at home on full pay, and the dismissal is following the procedure the law sets out, according to the same account.

Rescued in March

The closure comes seven months after a rescue meant to save the plant. The Aveiro court declared the company insolvent in March 2025, when it employed about 500 people, the Lusa news agency reported at the time. Its creditors included Novo Banco, BPI, the state business agency IAPMEI, Scalabis and Servdebt.

Later that year more than 55 percent of the creditors voting approved the sale of the business to its own managers, the manager Marc Schmidt, the financial director Daniela Alegria and the consultant Carlos Pais, for 8.5 million euros, ECO reported in September 2025. The management buyout had the support of Volkswagen, the plant's main customer, and promised to keep all 363 workers then on the payroll. When the sale went through, the insolvency administrator, Jorge Calvete, said the company remained "in full operation" and had not dismissed anyone, according to Lusa.

The purchase was completed in March 2026, Jornal de Negócios says. It did not last: orders from the Volkswagen group, almost the plant's only customer, became too small to keep it running.

Thirty-seven years in Santiago de Riba-Ul

The company was founded in 1989 in the industrial zone of Santiago de Riba-Ul and makes high-pressure die-cast aluminium components for the car industry. Its shareholders included the heirs of the founder, Ralf Schmidt, as well as Marc Schmidt and Filipe Villas-Boas, father of the FC Porto president André Villas-Boas, according to ECO, which put its 2022 turnover at 42.4 million euros.

We found no public statement from the company, the workers' union or Oliveira de Azeméis council by late Tuesday morning.

Volkswagen itself is shedding 50,000 more jobs worldwide, and declared insolvencies in Portugal rose 5.1 percent in the first eight months of the year. Workers who lose their jobs in a collective dismissal can apply for unemployment benefit, which now replaces about 64 percent of a lost wage, according to a Bank of Portugal study.