Jaguar Land Rover creates another 1100 jobs

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are creating a further 1,100 jobs in the Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich to cope with anticipated demand.

Last week we said we were expecting an announcement from Jaguar Land Rover about production at Castle Bromwich following a deal with Unions to secure new working practices. And this seems to be it.

Jaguar are hiring an extra 1,100 staff at the West Midlands Castle Bromwich plant, which means JLR will have taken on an extra 8,000 staff in the last two years – and that in the face of the worst recession in most people’s memory.

JLR say the new staff are needed to cope with the extra demand for Jaguar cars and in particular the new XF Sportbrake along with the recently updated 2013 MY XJ with its new V6 S/C engine and XF models. We assume they also include the anticipated production of the new F-Type.

What still puzzles us a little is that the numbers don’t quite add up for us. We believe Jaguar is aiming for production of 100,000 cars annually at Castle Bromwich now agreement has been reached with the Unions.

But Jaguar’s annual sales still don’t come close to that, and adding new derivatives of existing models – like an XF Coupe or XJ Coupe – won’t be enough to get there. Even throwing in the F-Type as a Roadster and Coupe doesn’t seem likely to see production up near 100,000 cars annually.

We think there’s more to come on new models soon.