Second engine plant announced for JLR in Midlands

26 November 2015

Jaguar Land Rover will hire hundreds of new workers after announcing plans to double the size of its site near Wolverhampton and take investment towards £1 Billion.

It will invest £450m in its engine manufacturing centre, doubling its size to 200,000 sq ft (18,581 sq m). The plant, on the i54 business site in south Staffordshire, employs 700 people, a number it expects to double. A rise in global demand had led to the centre's expansion, the company said.

Jaguar Land Rover first announced plans to build the engine manufacturing centre at the i54 business park in 2011, spending £500m on the site by the time it had opened in October 2014.

It supports three other manufacturing sites in the UK, based at Castle Bromwich and Solihull in the West Midlands and Halewood on Merseyside.

The firm currently makes about 400,000 engines every year, with one coming off the production line every 40 seconds, and these are 2.0 petrol and diesel units used in its cars and 4x4 models.

The new plant will produce engines for models being launched from 2018 but the statement does not say what will happen to the current V6 and V8 engines JLR buys from Ford Bridgend Engine Plant which has been making them since 1990. 



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