THE new boss of Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant says forcing down its costs is one of his biggest challenges.

Mark Goncalves arrives at the home of the Astra from his previous position as managing director of General Motors's Opel plant in his native Portugal.

But he's had wide experience in senior posts for the motor giant, which he joined in 1978.

In a profile of him in the latest edition of Vauxhall Mirror headed The Cost Enforcer, he says that, despite the plant recently celebrating a 36% year-on-year performance improvement, this is no time to relax.

Mr Goncalves said: 'The technical foundations are in place, the plant has had a lot of investment put in - but we're still the most expensive car producer in GM Europe, and we've got to reverse that position.

'We definitely have a strong market but our challenge now is to get more consistency in our production process. By April we need to be consistently hitting more than 40 cars per hour.'

Mr Goncalves stresses 'forcing down costs' is a big challenge.

'Our costs are too high across all areas of our operation,' he said. 'If each of us does a bit to increase efficiency, it all adds up to a very big effort.'

The director added: 'All three plants producing Astras are running at excess capacity now, but we're early in the production lifecycle. We can't afford to wait to address the underlying cost and production issues - we've got to do it now, because there will be very tough internal competition to see which plants win the next model.'

According to the Portuguese Press, Mr Goncalves is well-equipped to meet his new challenges, having been named Executive of the Year 2004 for his management ability by motoring magazine Turbo and for achieving productivity results at the Azambuja factory that ranked it among the best manufacturing plant in Portugal.

Mr Goncalves is married to Maria, who will soon join him in the area. His daughter lives in London.