JLR to invest €45 mn in new production press line at Halewood facility

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), owned by Tata Motors, will invest €45 million in installing a new production press line at its Halewood facility near Liverpool, as the iconic British carmaker increases speed and capacity to keep pace with robust demand for its vehicles globally.

JLR, UK's top manufacturer of premium luxury vehicles, said that the new line has a combined press stamping capacity of some 7900 tonnes, making it the fastest and one of the biggest and most powerful press lines across JLR, stamping both steel and aluminum panels.

The new press line allows dies casts, metal molds that form the panel shapes, to be changed faster from 55 minutes to 5 minutes, speeding up the delivery of the required volume of pressed parts at its Halewood facility.

Halewood facility manufactures the Land Rover Freelander 2 and the Range Rover Evoque. The plant operates at full capacity, 24 hours a day, for the first time in its 50-year history.

JLR has invested more than £230 million in Halewood since 2011, and more than £3 billion in UK supply contracts linked with Evoque production.

Richard Else, operations director at Halewood, said, ''This colossal new press line reinforces Jaguar Land Rover's long-term investment in UK manufacturing. Halewood is one of the most flexible, advanced automotive manufacturing facilities in Europe, producing two of the highest quality, largest selling Jaguar Land Rover vehicles in over 170 countries world-wide.''

''This investment ensures we can make more panels, even more efficiently, and will continue to do so for many years to come,'' he added.

JLR has come a long way from the cut back in production, job cuts and wage freeze it was forced to implement during the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, which led many to believe that Tata Motors blundered in buying the carmaker from Ford Motors in 2008 for £2.7 billion.

JLR is now the UK's largest car exporter, generating around 85 per cent of its £15.8 billion. revenue from exports.

It sold 425,006 vehicles in 2013, up 19 per cent. Of that, Jaguar sold 76,668 vehicles and Land Rover 348,338 vehicles.