GM's Vauxhall announces new Astra

General Motors Co (GM.N) will build the next generation of its Astra compact in Britain, the U.S. carmaker has said. It would invest 125 million pounds ($199 million) in the Ellesmere Port plant, where assembly of the new vehicle will start in 2015. Britain's Unite union said 94 percent of those balloted voted in favor of changes to working conditions and that some 700 jobs would be created at the plant, securing its future until 2020. The automaker will build an updated version of the Opel Astra compact car at a plant in Ellesmere Port, England, while ending production of the model at its Ruesselsheim, Germany, factory, which GM said will remain in full use. The company didn’t say what it plans to do with its factory in Bochum, Germany, which has been regarded as a candidate for shuttering. " Bochum has no chance in the production system after 2015," Bloomberg quoted said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen as saying.