Jaguar Land Rover has reaffirmed its commitment to car development and production in the West Midlands with investment totalling £600m announced today.
The announcement completes a remarkable transformation for the company's facilities in the region, which were earmarked for consolidation as recently as 2010. The introduction of successful new models as well as significant investment have seen sales of Jaguar cars built at its Castle Bromwich plant are almost double that of five years ago.
Company CEO Dr. Ralf Speth said: “Jaguar Land Rover continues to demonstrate its unwavering support to the British automotive industry through sustained investments in advanced research, technology and innovation.
“This investment, made here in the heartland of our UK business operations, signals the confidence we have in this region to support the creation, engineering and manufacturing of ultra-low emission, premium British products, today and in the future.”
How the £600m has been spent
The money is split between three seperate facilities in the West Midlands.
The largest single investment has been made at the company’s Castle Bromwich plant, where over £400m has been spent upgrading, ahead of the new Jaguar XF going into build.
Of that amount, £320m is committed to an all-new 74,000sq ft body shop, which the company says cements the plant as a global centre of excellence for lightweight vehicle manufacturing. The all-new XF completes the line-up of all-aluminium cars assembled at the Midlands plant which already builds F-Type and XJ models. An additional £16m has been spent on a assembly line which turn coils of aluminium into ‘blank sheets’ that will be pressed into body panels and parts on a new £50m press line. which is currently under construction. The remaining £30m has upgraded the trim and final assembly hall.
The Castle Bromwich announcement follows on from the commitment earlier this month that the company's Advanced Design and Engineering Centre in Whitley, Coventry will be doubled in size at a cost of £50m.
This is in addition to the £150m invested in the National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC) at the University of Warwick. Due to open in Spring 2017, it seeks to provide a home for Jaguar Land Rover’s advanced research teams and its partners from the supply chain and academia.
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