News : JLR to double engine plant workforce

Headline Auto

JLR to expand UK operations
JLR to expand UK operations

Jaguar Land Rover, already the UK’s leading automotive investor in research and development with a £3billion spend in 2012, is doubling the number of jobs at is new Wolverhampton engine plant to 1400.

Dr Ralf Speth, Chief Executive Officer, said that the 700 new jobs at the four-cylinder engine plant, due on stream by 2015, are on top of the 800 new jobs already announced for the company’s Solihull assembly plant. ‘We are attracting some of the best talents in the UK,’ he said at a business briefing on the eve of the Geneva motor show.

The news came as JLR enjoyed its best year with global sales of 350,000 and year-on-year revenues up 20 per cent in the third quarter, said Dr Speth. ‘We are a small British company and not in the volume race,” he said. “But we have plans to expand our product range and global presence.’

The new all-aluminium Range Rover Sport will be revealed at the end of March, he said. This will be followed by diesel-hybrid models later this year, ‘and three more surprises which I will not tell you about just yet.’

Global Sales Director, Phil Popham, said that much of JLR’s sales growth will come from expanding Jaguar into new markets. Land Rover sells in 177 countries but Jaguar is only present in 135. The plan is to take Jaguar into another 40 or so markets alongside Land Rover with joint Jaguar Land Rover dealerships.

‘We’re opening 10 new dealers a month globally,’ he said.

Keith Adams

16 Comments

  1. ‘and three more surprises which I will not tell you about just yet.’

    Interesting – I’m guessing the “baby” Jag will be one of those

  2. Or perhaps the reveal of the all-new Discovery 5 at the end of the year, to go on sale in 2014? Maybe even a Range Rover Evoque Sport derivative. What about the Jaguar F Type fixed-head coupe or something even more extreme for the XK range, bearing in mind the competition it will be feeling from the smaller F Type once it reaches the showroom? At the other end of the XK range, perhaps even a new supercharged 3-litre V6 engine option? Who knows.

  3. New Disco, or an aluminium RR Sport. I’d like to see a baby Jag but don’t think it’s going to be announced quite yet. If it was I’m sure we’d have seen scoops by now.
    Thinking of which does anyone else remember in ’95 when Car showed the XK8 S-type and X-type undisguised. I always suspected that was a deliberate leak.

  4. I’d assumed that they bought in their 4 cyl petrol engines from Ford (as they do the 4 pot diesel for the Deafener). Looks like Tata have hit the ground running and are doing all they can to cut ties to Ford.

    All looks very encouraging.

  5. A new baby Jaguar would be great, taking over where the “X Type” left off. Consolidating at least some Jaguar and Land Rover dealers would be a good marketing move too, methinks.

  6. I thought the new “Hotfire” engine due to be built here would be a modular unit able to be manufactured as a Petrol or Diesel from the same base, like the old Peugeot XU engines. However, I read an article in an engineering journal the other day that suggested the new Engine was based on the Ford Ecoboost already used by JLR. The new i54 plant was even described as a “cut and paste” of Fords Bridgend plant with an identical layout, machine tools and processes. That doesnt explain how diesels will be produced. Regardless great news about the planned expansion.

  7. They should stand outside the Longbridge gates and stop everyone and sat ‘pssst, want a job that is a bit more secure, and where you will actually be working?’

  8. How many people used to work in Powertrain – shame the Wolverhampton factory wasn’t the old Longbridge one rather than built from scratch?

    Local TV news also said the new engine plant is being mirrored in India also.

  9. Chris C
    Birmingham has BMW’s Hams Hall, I imagine most Powertrain workers would have tried to get employment there…

    Besides, it’s great that the UK has so many modern engine plants, not clapped out old ones.

  10. #10 @Paul, the saddest part of that Newsletter is the number of Machine Tools that will be purchased overseas 🙁

  11. But who knows, perhaps theres someone in Germany saying how sad that the engine in their BMW is made in Britain. Thats life.

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