Jaguar Land Rover will expand its advanced engineering design centre at its global headquarters, as part of a £600-million investment programme into manufacturing and research and development across three UK sites.
This programme has already involved a £400-million investment into upgrading facilities at its Castle Bromwich Advanced Manufacturing Plant, where it is set to produce the updated Jaguar XF, the company said.
The £600-million investment, which covers both recent and future investment, covers three sites – Castle Bromwich, the Whitley Advanced Design and Development Centre based at its headquarters, and the National Automotive Innovation Centre it began construction last week.
JLR has acquired 62 acres to add to the existing 55-acre site at Whitley, near the city of Coventry, to support its research and development of ultra low emission technologies, the company said on Wednesday.
JLR has not announced the number of new jobs that would be created, though the space would be used to create facilities for product development engineers.
The £400-million put into Castle Bromwich, where the original Jaguar XF, the XJ and the Jaguar F-TYPE have been produced, included £320 million put into an aluminium body shop focused on lightweight vehicle manufacture.
The new XF, which will also be manufactured at Castle Bromwich, is set to go on sale in the UK in August this year, and in India, in late 2016, with a price tag starting at around £32,000.
In 2015, JLR spent £2.75 billion on new products and capital expenditure globally, and is committed to spending over £3 billion in the year to March 2016.
Last week construction began on a £150-million National Automotive Innovation Centre set to open at the University of Warwick in two years’ time.
The centre is a collaboration between Jaguar Land Rover and the university, to push greater cooperation between industry and academia on automotive research and development.
In January, the company announced it would create 1,300 new jobs in the UK to support the production of the F-PACE, the production version of its concept crossover car, set to be produced at its Solihull plant near Birmingham.
Source: JLR
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