JLR is to pump £100 million into its Castle Bromwich factory so it can start making the hugely popular Jaguar XE saloon.
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The XE will gradually transfer from its current home at Solihull, demonstrating the inherent flexibility of Jaguar Land Rover’s West Midlands manufacturing operations – the result of more than £1bn of infrastructure investment at Solihull and Castle Bromwich. That division between the two plants will stay until around the end of the following monetary year in April 2017, when Castle Bromwich will go up against the full XE build.
Jaguar is also now building major industrial space on the site of the former Dunlop Motorsport factory, next to the plant in Castle Bromwich, which will be used for receiving, storing and transporting components around the site.
The auto was the first of the new generation of Jaguar Land Rovers made with aluminium bodies and Ingenium diesels made at the Wolverhampton engine factory on the i54.
Wolfgang Stadler, executive director of Manufacturing, Jaguar Land Rover, commented: “The significant investment to create two centres of excellence in aluminium vehicle manufacturing, utilising shared technologies, was deliberate”. This surprising hike in sale rate of Jaguar is highly influenced by the release of the Jaguar F-Pace and Jaguar XE. The arrival of the XE sees us increase our model lines and volume.
The E-Pace is also believed to be sitting atop the new Jaguar Land Rover EV platform that was launched past year.
“The commissioning of our all-new press line and launch of our body shop to support the introduction of XE means Castle Bromwich is future-proof”, Guibert adds.
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Jaguar Land Rover today revealed that the mid-sized premium sport sedan, the Jaguar XE, is to be built at Castle Bromwich – marking the return of all Jaguar sports and saloon auto manufacturing to the Birmingham plant. We are also hoping that this new electric SUV will be given the name E-Pace as this name was recently trademarked by the company. Around 3,000 people are employed at Castle Bromwich. Earlier this month, we got you word that JLR is set to launch the new XF in October, and now, our sources tell us that the F-Pace will be launched in the same month.
