Production has resumed this week at Jaguar Land Rover’s two Midland car factories following a temporary shutdown.
The Coventry car maker’s factories in Solihull and Castle Bromwich both saw shutdowns – Solihull for two weeks and Castle Bromwich for one week.
Jaguar Land Rover said the Castle Bromwich shutdown was to coincide with half-term and had been scheduled some time ago.
The Solihull plant would also ordinarily shut to coincide with the autumn half-term but the suspension of production was extended to two weeks as the car maker had been stockpiling cars, in part due to a sales slowdown in China.
Prior to both shutdowns Jaguar Land Rover also revealed workers at Castle Bromwich would be on a three-day week until Christmas.
Powerful headwinds
The car maker is currently having to cope with what have been billed as powerful headwinds in the shape of Brexit uncertainty, declining demand for diesel vehicles and slowing sales.
Last week Jaguar Land Rover announced sales had fallen by 13.2% to 129,887 vehicles for the three months to September 30.
The company reported revenues of £5.6billon and a pre-tax loss of £90million for the three-month period.
The car maker’s owner Tata Motors subsequently revealed it had launched a turnaround programme to “drive £2.5 billion of profit, cost and cash flow improvements” over the next 18 months.
Jaguar Land Rover has four UK factories – or five if one includes the Jaguar Land Rover Classic restoration and manufacturing facility and Special Vehicle Operations centre in Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventry.
There are three car manufacturing plants – in Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Halewood on Merseyside – and an engine factory near Wolverhampton.
The Lode Lane plant in Solihull produces the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Range Rover Velar, Land Rover Discovery and Jaguar F-Pace.
The Castle Bromwich plant only produces Jaguar vehicles – the XE, XF, XF Sportbrake, XJ and F-Type.
Halewood is the home of production for the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport.
Two models – the Jaguar E-Pace and Jaguar I-Pace – are made under contract by Magna Steyr in Austria.
Production of the Land Rover Discovery is set to switch from Solihull to Slovakia, at the car maker’s new plant in Nitra, which was officially opened last week.
The October shutdowns are normally scheduled to allow maintenance to take place and enable workers’ to take family holidays.
A Jaguar Land Rover spokesman said the Castle Bromwich shutdown had been scheduled for some time.
“We are on a shut down but this is a regularly scheduled shutdown that has been in the calendar for the last 12 months,” said the spokesman.
“We are closed for the school half-term holiday and had exactly the same shutdown this time last year.”
Staff at the Ford factory in Bridgend were also told to take a week off work due to the Jaguar Land Rover shutdowns.
Ford Engine Plant employees working on the AJ assembly line – which makes the Jaguar AJ-V8 engine – were told the line would be closed for five days from October 29 until November 2.
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