According to The Wall Street Journal, General Motors is trying to sell its French plant for the second time in four years. This plant develops and builds 6 speed automatic gearboxes (especially for markets outside Europe) for BMW and other GM Group brands.

In 2008 there was a first attempt to sell the Strasbourg factory, which employs a thousand workers, mostly to keep the facility open.

Jim Cain, GM’s spokesman, said: “There are commitments for maintaining the production of gearboxes in the upcoming years”. The American manufacturer hired consultants to mediate the sale of this unit. GM said recently in a statement: “We want to find buyers who continue to labor and to maintain not only the employees but also the suppliers and customers.”

In 2010, when bankrupt, the factory was again re-acquired by one euro, and workers agreed to freeze their salaries for two years in order to keep their jobs. GM’s European operations reached 256 million Euros loss in the first quarter of 2012, so the company is trying to downsize the overall operation in order to trim these bad results.