Jaguar Land Rover: 1,000 new jobs at Solihull

Jaguar Land Rover has announced it is creating 1,000 new jobs at its Solihull plant in the Midlands, currently responsible for Range Rover production.

Isn’t it nice, when all we hear of the economy is doom and gloom, that Jaguar Land Rover are doing so well they need to take on more staff to cope with demand?

That’s exactly what’s happening at the JLR Solihull plant, where JLR are increasing the plant workforce by 25 per cent with the addition of 1,000 production operators and skilled trades people.

The Jaguar Land Rover plant at Solihull is currently home to the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Land Rover Discovery 4 and Defender. But that may be changing in the coming years.

With the new range of Land Rovers and Range Rovers arriving in the next few years – and Jaguars sated intention of  ’40 significant production actions in the next five years’ – the demarcation between producing Land Rovers and Jaguars will start to blur.

The latest platform for the new Range Rover is based on that of the new Jaguar XJ, so the future at JLR will see both Land Rovers and Jaguars sharing much of their platforms and engines. That could easily mean both marques being built in any of Jaguar’s three plants – Halewood, Castle Bromwich or Solihull – in the future.

And what a turnaround from just two years ago for Solihull. Back in the Summer of 2009 Jaguar Land Rover had plans to completely close Solihull and transfer the bulk of its staff to Castle Bromwich to cut costs. The turnaround at JLR saw the plans to close Solihull dropped, and now we get a 25 per cent increase in staffing numbers.

JLR are doing something right.