Ford's Volvo Cars to expand job cuts: report

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Volvo Car Corporation, owned by U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co (F.N), plans to shed up to 1,000 jobs in addition to sweeping cuts already announced, Swedish television reported on Sunday without disclosing its sources.

A spokeswoman for the company said she could neither comment on nor deny the report by Swedish public service channel SVT.

The new cuts would mainly affect white-collar employees at the carmaker which is grappling with weak market demand and surging raw material costs, SVT said.

"We are in a tough spot, everybody knows that," Volvo spokeswoman Maria Bohlin said.

Volvo Cars announced plans in June to slash 2,000 jobs and shut down the third shift at its Torslanda auto plant in southwest Sweden at the end of this year.

Only two weeks ago it said it would bring forward the closure of the shift to October instead of December and estimated it would also need to cut an additional 900 jobs next year due to a recent "dramatic worsening" of market conditions in Europe. The exact size of the new job cuts had not yet been decided, SVT reported.

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard)