Jaguar Land Rover factory closure

Tata – owners of Jaguar Land Rover – has announced they will close either the Solihull or Castle Bromwich production plants.

• Update 25/9/09: We’ve taken a second – more in-depth – look at JLR’s future. It’s actually much more positive than this story suggests.

First comes the good news – the new Range Rover LRX is to be built in Halewood from 2010 – and now the bad. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are to close one of their Midlands factories – Castle Bromwich (which builds Jaguars) or Solihull (which produces Land Rovers) – at some point after 2014. So at least there’s some notice.

JLR unions have already brokered a deal to ensure no job losses in the short term, but JLR are committed to rationalising their manufacturing across just two plants in the UK, instead of the existing three. The decision will be made about which plant to close in the next eighteen months.

The most likely scenario is that JLR will close Solihull – which currently produces Land Rovers and employs 5000 people – and concentrate Land Rover production at Halewood. That would leave Castle Bromwich as the home of Jaguar production.

JLR say this is a response to the fall in luxury car sales and the need to rationalise production. But it’s probably much wider than that. We see no prospect that JLR will cease production in the UK, but we also see that any additional production capacity needed – as a result of the exciting new models from both Jaguar and Land Rover – will be made outside the UK. And almost certainly in India.

Tata are a business, after all. And the UK hasn’t exactly bent over backwards to help Tata.