Jaguar Land Rover to invest £600 million in UK facility

Jaguar Land Rover today announced a £600-million ($894 million, €814 million) investment in an advanced vehicle manufacturing facility in the West Midlands, confirming its support to product creation and the region.

The British car brand, owned by India's Tata Motors, made the largest single investment at the company's Castle Bromwich plant, where over £400 million has been spent in new and upgraded facilities to support the introduction of the all-new Jaguar XF.

Jaguar Land Rover, which was bought by Tata Motors for $2.3 billion from Ford in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis, is now the showpiece of Britain's resurgent car industry.

Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth said, "Jaguar Land Rover continues to demonstrate its unwavering support to the British automotive industry through sustained investments in advanced research, technology and innovation.

"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 site now boasts of a £320-million state-of-the art aluminium body shop, which completes the site's transformation into a global centre of excellence for lightweight vehicle manufacturing.

Sales of Jaguar cars built at the Castle Bromwich plant have almost doubled since five years ago, thanks to a refreshed and "exhilarating" model range which also includes the XJ and F-Type,l the company said.

The all-new XF is 80 kg lighter than its nearest competitor and 190kgs lighter than its predecessor - ''a car that redefined Jaguar's design language and resulted in it becoming the most awarded Jaguar model in history, the company stated.''

''These models together have seen the iconic motoring marque rank as the highest achieving automotive luxury brand in the United States for customer satisfaction and second amongst all automotive nameplates in the JD Power 2014 Initial Quality Study (IQS) and automotive performance, execution and layout (APEAL) study,'' according to a company release.

The introduction of the all-new XF completes an all-aluminum line-up at the Midlands plant which has committed significant investment to every stage of the manufacturing process.

''The company's latest infrastructure investment at Castle Bromwich builds on the plants pioneering lightweight vehicle manufacturing expertise, honed over decades, and demonstrates the inherent agility and flexibility of Jaguar Land Rover's manufacturing operations as it continues to maximise the opportunities afforded by investment in a modular, scalable aluminium architecture,'' the release added.

Jaguar Land Rover said it is also investing in the £150 million National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC), which will open in Spring 2017, providing a state-of-the-art technology hub for Jaguar Land Rover's advanced research team and collaborative partners from the supply chain and academia.