Jaguar Land Rover production to restart
Manufacturing at Jaguar Land Rover will partially restart as soon as Wednesday, the firm has said, a month and a half after a crippling cyberattack forced the UK’s largest carmaker to halt its production line.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Tata Motors-owned car brand confirmed that a phased restart at two of its West Midlands plants will begin on 8 October, and that the firm’s staff will return to other integral production phases, including its “body shop, paint shop and logistics operations centre”.
“This week marks an important moment for JLR and all our stakeholders as we now restart our manufacturing operations following the cyber incident,” said Adrian Mardell, Jaguar Land Rover’s outgoing chief executive officer. “From tomorrow, we will welcome back our colleagues at our engine production plant in Wolverhampton, shortly followed by our colleagues making our world‑class cars at Nitra [in Slovakia] and Solihull.”
The restart is the first time the automaker has been able to carry out any production of new vehicles since the end of August; a standstill that insiders estimate will be costing Jaguar Land Rover £5m a day in lost revenue.
It comes a full two weeks after the firm fired up its IT systems in September, which had left dozens of its suppliers on the brink of failure and thousands of workers within it facing the prospect of redundancy.
The carmaker also confirmed the number of cars sold to dealers, distributors, or importers fell 24.2 per cent year on year to 66,165 in the quarter, with retail sales dropping 17.1 per cent to 85,495.
Jaguar Land Rover confirms finance scheme
Responding to a growing clamour for state support for the several layers of Jaguar Land Rover’s supply chain facing collapse, the government initially backed a £1.5bn commercial loan to try and stave off failures and job losses in the UK’s already struggling auto sector.
Suppliers and their industry bodies had warned the attack, the suspect of which has still not been revealed, had left them facing late payments and a dearth of new orders.
But with the government-backed scheme hitting roadblocks, Jaguar Land Rover also confirmed it had rolled out a separate financing scheme in its announcement on Tuesday that it said would “provide qualifying suppliers with cash-up-front” as the restart phase got underway.
Under the scheme, which is believed to be in the realm of £500m, suppliers would be paid “much faster than under their standard payment terms”, in a move that will provide car part makers and similar businesses with much-needed solvency.
Mardell added: “Our suppliers are central to our success, and today we are launching a new financing arrangement that will enable us to pay our suppliers early, using the strength of our balance sheet to support their cashflows.”
Responding to Jaguar Land Rover’s production update, business secretary Peter Kyle said: “This is very welcome news for workers and suppliers, but I know many are still under pressure, particularly further down the supply chain.
“My focus will remain on helping JLR resolve this cyber incident, making further progress towards restarting production, and supporting the long-term health of our automotive supply chain.”