Jaguar Land Rover To Move Discovery Production To Slovakia

We first got to know in 2015, that Jaguar Land Rover talked about expanding its global footprint with a manufacturing plant in Slovakia. The company invested $1.5 billion in building the plant and will have an annual capacity of 3,00,000 units. Jaguar Land Rover expects to roll out cars from this plant later this year. Currently, the Tata-owned carmaker has 3 production plants in the UK, builds cars in China and also has assembling operations in India, with a plant in Brazil too. A plant in Slovakia would help JLR access bigger volumes quicker, with a view to reach more markets and more consumers at a faster pace than it could in the past.

With the manufacturing facility set to start later this year and the company has already announced that it is set to move all production of its Discovery car to Slovakia before building its new Range Rover at an English factory. It also announced that this could lead to some job cuts in Britain as a result.

"The potential losses of some agency employed staff in the UK is a tough one but forms part of our long-term manufacturing strategy as we transform our business globally," the company said in a statement.

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Moving production from Britain will slash several thousands of pounds off the cost per vehicle, the firm's Chief Finance Officer Ken Gregor said last year. The new Range Rover and Range Rover sport will however be built at Jaguar Land Rover's Solihull plant on an architecture which is designed to allow for diesel, petrol, electric and hybrid models to be produced.

The company will cut 1,000 jobs and reduce production at two of its English factories as demand for diesel cars slumps in the face of higher taxes and a regulatory crackdown. It has also blamed Brexit for hitting demand in Europe's second-largest autos market, where demand fell 6 percent last year.

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Jaguar Land Rover announced in 2017, that from 2020 all its new vehicles will be electrified. The company will introduce a portfolio of electrified products across its model range, embracing fully electric, plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid vehicles. The Tata Motors owned company builds nearly one in three of Britain's 1.7 millions cars but is producing its first electric vehicle, the I-PACE, in Austria. In Britain, the firm built just over 530,000 vehicles last year at three production facilities and also has a separate engine site and headquarters, employing roughly 40,000 people in total.