Jaguar Land Rover has opened its new £1billion manufacturing plant in Nitra, Slovakia, where the new Land Rover Discovery will be produced.
The 300,000 square-metre factory currently employs 1500 people, with the first phase capable of making 150,000 cars a year. The Discovery is the only model yet confirmed to be built at the plane, but it is likely other SUVs will be made there in future. JLR is currently recruiting another 850 people to work at the side.
Jaguar Land Rover boss Ralf Speth said the plant was the latest part of the British firm’s global expansion plan. Jaguar Land Rover models are already produced through joint ventures in China and Brazil, and under contract by companies in India and Austria.
“Global businesses require global operational footprints,” said Speth. “While Jaguar Land Rover’s heart and sould remain firmly anchored in the UK, expanding internationally only enriches and strengthens our UK business.”
The Nitra plant, which received financial investment from the Slovakian government, has been under construction since 2016.
Jaguar Land Rover’s Solihull factory has recently begun a planned two-week shutdown following a decline in global sales. It is also operating a three-day week at its Castle Bromwich factory, where the Jaguar XE, Jaguar XF and Jaguar XJ saloons are made, until after the Christmas period.
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Driving the Land Rover Discover to JLR's new Slovakian plant
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Slovakian subeditor?
Plane? Side? Sould?
POETS day?
Excellent news from JLR! This
Always bad comments about JLR
Always negative comments about JLR products, reliability & product planning, but no one gives them (or TATA) the credit for the fact that they totally turned around a business that under Ford control was a "basket case" & nearly on the brink of extinction!!!!!
They have got a fantastic product range, all totally desirable products & all designed & engineered in the UK too!!!!
The Slovakian plant will help JLR edge it's bets against any form of BREXIT.
(The Germans would never say anything that bad about their car industy, If JLR had have mislead & lied like VW has it would have been closed down immediately)
jagdavey wrote:
Well said. JLR open one car factory abroad and its all doom and gloom, what about BMW or Mercedes which both make lots of cars outside Germany?
Defending Ford.
I'm going to defend Ford for what they did at JLR. They improved the product quality. One thing nobody look to Ford for is their quality but it's one of the best in the business. Because if you're mass manufacturing the last thing you want is a lot of problems! So in terms of quality they're betting than some "premium" manufacturers.
What Ford did wrong, however, wasn't updating the design language at Jaguar. That took a bit of effort from Ian McCallum to turn that around. The X-Type shouldn't have ever looked like the XJ, a car that wasn't selling becuase of its out dated looks. McCallum even had to do an updated S-Type to show that they needed to modernise the look at Jaguar.
Now look at their cars. Beautiful. They've got a simple elegance to them that makes the designs timeless classics, just as he did at Aston Martin.