Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing, Jaguar, Land Rover, UK



The heads of Jaguar Land Rover are having a busy couple of weeks opening factories. Just days after inaugurating the company's first overseas plant in China, the automaker's new Engine Manufacturing Center in the UK is being inaugurated, as well. The plant near Wolverhampton, England, marks the first time in decades that JLR is building its own powerplants in-house. Further signaling the importance of this launch for the business, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were on hand and even tweeted about it.

The factory's first major project is to build JLR's latest Ingenium four-cylinders, starting with the 2.0-liter diesel version. "Our new Engine Manufacturing Centre is an important step in advancing the competitiveness and capability of the UK automotive sector. The production of in-house engines will support the expansion of the UK supply chain providing critical mass for inward investment," said Trevor Leeks, plant operations director in the automaker's announcement.

Opening the doors to the Engine Manufacturing Center has been years in the making for JLR. The plant was first announced in September 2011 and broke ground in June 2012. Building it cost the company 500 million pounds ($800 million) and created 1,400 new jobs. Of course, being a state-of-the-art factory, considerations were made to make the place as energy efficient as possible. That meant installing the UK's largest solar array with 21,000 panels to produce about 30 percent of the site's electricity needs.

This isn't even the end of JLR's continued construction. The company's Special Vehicles Operations team is getting its own new facility in England. The automaker is even rumored to be considering one in the US. Scroll down to read the business's full release about the engine plant's opening.Continue reading Jaguar opens new engine plant in the UK

Jaguar opens new engine plant in the UK originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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Jaguar have been rather coy about the full function of this plant. Buried in the press release is the information that it is for production of 4 cylinder Ingenium petrol and diesel engines. This presumably means the facility within the Ford Brigdend engine plant will continue ......

Graham

 

I'd wager the V8 & V6 petrol production at Bridgend will continue, purely on the economics. Also sourcing the V6 & V8 diesels from Dagenham, moving the existing products from established sites to a new one is probably not financially viable.

The machines, tooling, trained technicians, supply chain, it's all established and works pretty well. New factory for new engines, established factories for established engines.

The costs involved in relocating everything (or setting up new) are probably higher than the potential savings from bringing it in-house. And if you set up new, what would Ford do with the old tooling? There would be a cost attached to that.

I'd say there would be a long-term plan to bring the V6 & V8 production in-house, but probably not until there is a next-generation engine.

Just guessing of course...