Mitsubishi Fuso Restarts Its Tramagal Truck Line in September, but at 20 Vehicles a Day Instead of 28

Portugal's only truck factory is coming back to life, but smaller. Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation has told the Lusa news agency that production at its Tramagal plant, in the municipality of Abrantes in the Santarém district, "is expected to resume in September", ending a stoppage that ran through July's lay-off and August's holiday shutdown. Workers have been told to report back on 24 August, with assembly restarting the following week.

The company would not confirm either date, saying only that the unit "regularly adjusts production according to market demand and business conditions". The specifics come from Dário Lima, a Tramagal employee and an officer of SITE-CSRA, the union for workers in manufacturing, energy and environmental industries, who has asked management for a meeting in the first week after the return.

Twenty trucks a day, not twenty-eight

The figure that matters is the daily build rate. According to the information passed to the workforce, Tramagal will assemble 20 trucks a day from September to the end of the year, against the 28 a day the plant has produced in better periods. That is a reduction of nearly a third in the run rate, and Lima was careful to note it depends on orders the union has not yet seen.

"The expectation is that 20 trucks will be produced every day from September until the end of the year," he said, adding that the real picture will only be clear after the workforce returns. "Only after we go back and are able to meet will we know in concrete terms how many workers are returning and how many trucks we are going to build."

How the plant got here

• April 2026: Fuso announced it would suspend production in July and open a voluntary-redundancy programme, with roughly 400 permanent staff on the books at the time.
• July 2026: production halted and 267 workers were placed on lay-off, the Portuguese mechanism allowing temporary cuts to hours or suspension of contracts.
• August 2026: the customary holiday closure, with a return date of 24 August.
• Now: the company says about 400 people are employed at the unit, but declined to say how many were affected by the measures or how many will actually resume work. Temporary contracts have ended and the previously announced headcount reduction has gone through.

The restructuring is tied to what Tramagal builds. Fuso has confirmed that the 3.5-tonne diesel Canter is no longer being produced or sold for the European market, leaving the plant with heavier variants and the battery-electric eCanter. That shift was already visible when the company notified the employment institute of the July lay-off in June. The company declined to discuss future product plans.

Ownership has changed around the factory as well. Fuso says Tramagal "continues to be the principal production unit of European operations" and that this remains true following the plant's integration into the Archion group, the venture that now houses the business. Lima is less reassured. "While there are no certainties about things, the uncertainties continue," he said. "We are still waiting for new, for good news."

The national picture

The stoppage has left a visible hole in the national statistics. ACAP's monthly production counts, which showed output down 19.4 percent in July, record heavy-vehicle assembly at effectively nothing while Tramagal is idle. Portugal builds passenger cars at Palmela and Mangualde; for anything above a van, Tramagal is the country's plant. A September restart at 20 units a day should put a heavy-vehicle line back into the figures from the autumn, at a level that will still read as a decline against 2025.

What this means for you

• Abrantes and the Médio Tejo feel this first: a plant of roughly 400 people is a structural employer in a district without many alternatives. A return at two-thirds of capacity keeps the payroll running but settles nothing about the site's future.
• If you are buying a light commercial vehicle: the 3.5-tonne diesel Canter has left the European catalogue. Small businesses that had standardised on it now choose between heavier diesel variants and the electric eCanter, which changes both the purchase price and the charging arrangements.
• Watch the order book, not the restart: the union says the 20-a-day figure depends on orders nobody has confirmed. The meaningful signal will be a new model or contract for Tramagal, not the line moving again.

Fuso says it has nothing further to share on labour measures, and gives no indication of another stoppage or a shorter working week after the September restart. For the 400 people due back at the gates on Monday week, that is the closest thing to good news available: work, at a slower pace, with the question of what Tramagal builds after this year still open.