Jaguar to open car factory creating 750 jobs

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has confirmed plans to open a new factory on a site near Wolverhampton, West Midlands, which is estimated to create up to 750 jobs.

The owner of the carmaker, Indian firm Tata, is investing £355m to build low-emission engines in petrol and diesel versions, but JLR has not yet released any further technical details nor which models the engines will be built for.

JLR chief executive Dr Ralf Speth said: “We expect the engine manufacturing facility to create up to 750 highly-skilled engineering and manufacturing posts at Jaguar Land Rover, along with hundreds more highly-skilled manufacturing jobs in the supply chain and the wider UK economy.”

The government is supporting JLR’s project through the Grant for Business Investment scheme with up to £10m.

“The government’s support for this project shows we are committed to the ongoing success of UK manufacturing and the UK automotive industry,” Business Secretary Vince Cable commented. “It is a huge vote of confidence in our successful automotive sector in the UK and the skills and expertise in our workforce.”

JLR has recently unveiled three new concept cars on the back of a period of strong sales fuelled, partly, by a growing number of orders from foreign markets, including China and India.

The company reported pre-tax profits of £1.1bn in the year to 31 March, up from £14.6m the previous year. Revenues increased 51% to £9.9bn.

JLR’s engines are currently supplied by Ford from plants including Bridgend and Dagenham in the UK.

Work at the site, which is on the Staffordshire-Wolverhampton border, is due to start early next year.

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Posted by admin on Sep 20 2011. Filed under Hardware & DIY, Logistics, Product News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry