JLR – Jaguar Land Rover – has announced it will be building a new Jaguar engine factory on a site on the Staffordshire-Wolverhampton border, creating 750 new jobs. The news from Tata, JLR’s Indian owner, is the culmination of on-going government and local council efforts to make the new plant possible.
Low emission engines will be built on the 120 hectare site, which is located near the M54.
As well as hundreds of highly skilled engineering and manufacturing jobs, Tata says that hundreds of additional jobs will be created in the local economy, as well as that of the wider UK economy.
4 cylinder engines will be built at the plant, which will increase Jaguar’s ability to produce high performance engines. Engines in current Jaguar models are presently supplied by Ford, through its plants in Dagenham and Bridgend – among others.
Jaguar and Land Rover have both seen increased sales over the recent years, much of this driven by demand from the burgeoning middle classes in China and India, where luxury cars are big business. The company’s relatively new found success follows a period under the ownership of Ford where the Jaguar brand was undergoing the equivalent of a car breakdown. Now, however, things are looking much more rosy.
At a time when unemployment figures are particularly poor, it is positive to see so many highly skilled jobs being created. Vince Cable, who recently visited the company’s Solihull plant, said of the news: "this sends out strong signals to potential inward investors across the world".
This message continues the government’s insistence that manufacturing is a very important sector in the UK economy. As well as being good for the economy, the news puts the Jaguar brand in a very strong position for the future.
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