VAUXHALL is close to realising its 25% target of UK-sourced components for its new Ellesmere Port-built Astra vehicle.

Parent group General Motors (GM) set the goal as part of a cost-cutting deal with unions to guarantee the long-term future of the Cheshire plant last May. It is keen to shorten its global supply chain and establish a cluster of components suppliers around the site.

A GM spokesman said: “We have £1bn of orders secured in new deals with suppliers and are close now to our target of 25% local content for the new Astra.”

Only 10% of parts used in the current Astra being built at Ellesmere Port are supplied by UK-based companies.

The spokesman added: “The orders include alloy wheels, exhaust systems and fuel tanks, which are rare for the UK.”

The new Astra will be built from 2015.

Creating a cluster around the plant would reduce transport costs, leading to less CO2 emissions, and hugely shorten the supply chain for the plant.

Ellesmere Port and Neston Labour MP Andrew Miller welcomed the progress toward achieving the 25% target and said a supplier cluster is part of a long-term strategy to support the Vauxhall site’s future.

“There’s land available on Vauxhall Park, which used to be the Bowater paper mill, so space isn’t a problem,” he said.

“Planning should not be a problem either, so if we can make that offer even more rigorously to companies as far afield as China who are manufacturing components that can only be good news.

“I am optimistic in the long term we will persuade other parts suppliers to relocate back to the UK as part of the strategy.”

The cluster plan has been boosted by a £19m fund for automotive and aerospace suppliers launched by Liverpool’s Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and three Midlands LEPs.

A Liverpool LEP spokesman said: “We are talking to people in the area who are expanding and with quite a few companies who are going to put funding bids in.”

John Fetherstone, trades union convener at the Vauxhall site, welcomed the progress on increasing UK components, and said: “I am not surprised as there was a commitment from both sides. The sooner we hit the target, and if we could exceed it, then even better.”