Jaguar Land Rover invests £370-million in new Range Rover

Jaguar Land Rover announced it has invested £370-million to upgrade its UK manufacturing facilities and increase productivity as it prepares to launch the all-new Range Rover in 170 countries around the world.

Inaugural sales of the fourth-generation Range
Rover, the world's most refined Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), are to begin this month following a three-year engineering project, supporting 1,000 jobs in design, product development and manufacturing at Jaguar Land Rover.

"This outstanding new Range Rover symbolises our commitment to investing in Britain and exporting around the world, delivering class-leading performance, agility, quality and luxury in a model that enjoys iconic status in almost every market. As the UK's leading automotive investor in R&D we are proud of the work that has gone into developing the new technologies and innovations to make the new Range Rover possible. Through a £370-million investment in our manufacturing facilities we have been able to build the world's first SUV with light-weight all-aluminium construction, a car that is 20 per cent lighter, with fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions reduced by 22 per cent," said Dr. Ralf Speth, Jaguar Land Rover Chief Executive Officer.

As part of the £370-million investment package, Jaguar Land Rover has installed a new aluminium body shop for the latest Range Rover at the company's Solihull plant, near Birmingham, along with upgrades to paint-applications technologies, trim assembly, warehousing and Jaguar Land Rover's first customer handover centre.

The Range Rover forms part of a new model offensive by Jaguar Land Rover, which will launch shortly the much-anticipated Jaguar XF Sportbrake and the exciting new Jaguar F-Type sports car.

"Jaguar Land Rover is firing on all cylinders, generating export revenues of close to £8-billion a year as we meet demand for a model-range that justifies continued expansion in our UK facilities and elsewhere," added Dr Speth.

The Jaguar Land Rover Chief Executive celebrated the new Range Rover launch at a preview event in Richmond Park, London, where prospective owners, dealers, the media and company executives hailed the latest model.

Customers will begin taking delivery of the new vehicles in early 2013, some 40 years after the first Range Rover was unveiled.

The arrival of the latest model follows a significant investment in all-aluminium production processes at Land Rover's Solihull plant, where more than 6,800 workers are employed on Range Rover and other models.

The light-weight aluminium platform will deliver enhanced performance and fuel economy, lowering CO2 emissions. Such breakthroughs follow a capital expenditure programme that has seen Jaguar Land Rover create more than 8,000 new jobs in the past two years.

The company is spending in excess of £1.3-billion with suppliers around the world, with £800-million of that in the UK alone, supporting an estimated total of 190,000 jobs in the UK supply chain.

The market launch schedule for the new Range Rover will be announced in the coming months. Full technical specification and pricing will be released ahead of the Paris international motor show this month.

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