Jaguar Land Rover Announces More Investment

Every announcement from Jaguar Land Rover these days seems to be about either an increase in sales, investment or model lineup. The crucial word there is 'increase'! These are brands that, for years, had to languish at the bottom end of sales-charts, but are now enjoying what are, undoubtedly, their best days. Of the two marques, it is Land Rover of course that dominates the sales, and also the growth. However, after refreshing the Land Rover portfolio over the past few years, the focus has shifted to the leaping cat in recent months. The Jaguar range is also being overhauled, and so after the F-Type, we have seen the arrival of the 3-Series rival - the XE, an announcement that a crossover model - the F-Pace - will, in fact, be made, and we are now on the verge of a New York Show debut for the 2nd generation XF sedan too.

It is, therefore, not surprising that Jaguar's chief manufacturing site - Castle Bromwich - leads the list of new investments announced by the company. A total of nearly $900 million will be invested in the company's various facilities, but Castle Bromwich gets the lion's share at $600 million to support the production of the new Jaguar XF. Ralf Speth, CEO, Jaguar Land Rover, said: "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."

The Castle Bromwich plant was almost shut down before JLR was acquired by Tata Motors; it now gets an all-new aluminium body shop, and this is the largest single investment in its history. Besides the XF, the plant also makes the XJ and F-Type, while the XE comes from Solihull. Furthermore, besides the investment at Castle Bromwich, JLR will also double the operational footprint of its facility in Whitley. The new updated site will be home to highly-skilled product development engineers who are working on JLR's future vehicle lineup.