Today, Jaguar Land Rover welcomed the Prime Minister David Cameron to its world-class Engine Manufacturing Centre in the West Midlands. The Prime Minister was given a tour of the new plant where he saw the on-going installation of the manufacturing equipment first hand.
Jaguar Land Rover’s state-of-the-art Engine Manufacturing Centre is the first new facility that the company has built from the ground up. Based at the heart of the UK, it is ideally located between the company’s three other manufacturing sites at Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull. Almost 1,400 jobs will be created by the time the plant reaches its full capacity.
Representing an investment of more than £500 million, the plant will manufacture Jaguar Land Rover’s most advanced engines ever. Designed and developed at the company’s Product Development Centre in Whitley, this new family of premium, lightweight, low-friction, low-emission four cylinder petrol and diesel engines will be manufactured for future Jaguar Land Rover vehicles.
The Prime Minister said, “Whenever I come to one of your plants, it makes my spirits soar when I see such an exciting future for British manufacturing. Everywhere I go in the world I support Jaguar Land Rover. This is a great British success story.”
Jaguar Land Rover’s Executive Director, Mike Wright commented,“Our world-class new facility incorporates the latest technologies meeting the highest standards of production and demonstrates our continued commitment to UK manufacturing.
We are proud to show Prime Minister David Cameron around our plant today as our team begins to commission the equipment which will be used to manufacture our most advanced engines ever.”
The plant boasts almost 100,000 square metres of internal floor area, equivalent to the area of 14 football pitches. It comprises of three manufacturing halls – one for machining the cylinder heads, cylinder blocks and crankshafts, one for assembling diesel engines and one for assembling petrol engines. The first engines will come off the assembly line in early 2015
