JLR invests over Rs 3,250 crore in new Range Rover

Jaguar Land Rover has announced it has invested £370 million (Rs 3,290 crore) 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 are to begin this month following a three-year engineering project, supporting 1,000 jobs in design, product development and manufacturing at JLR.

CEO Dr Ralf Speth said: “We are proud of the work that has gone into developing the new technologies and innovations to make the new Range Rover possible. Through this investment in our manufacturing facilities, we have been able to build the world’s first SUV with lightweight all-aluminium construction, a car that is 20 percent lighter, with fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions reduced by 22 percent.”

As part of the investment package, JLR has installed a new aluminium body shop for the latest Range Rover at the Solihull plant, along with upgrades to paint-applications technologies, trim assembly and warehousing.

“Jaguar Land Rover is firing on all cylinders, generating export revenues of close to £8 billion (Rs 71,152 crore) a year as we meet demand for a model-range that justifies continued expansion in our UK facilities and elsewhere,” added DrSpeth.

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 lightweight aluminium platform will deliver enhanced performance and fuel economy, lowering CO2 emissions. Such breakthroughs follow a capital expenditure programme that has seen JLR create more than 8,000 new jobs in the past two years. The company is spending in excess of £1.3 billion (Rs 11,562 crore) 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.

In August, demand for vehicles helped lift pre-tax profits by 32 percent to £333 million (Rs 2,961 crore) for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, with more than 85,000 cars sold in April-June 2012. Range Rover has been a major contributor to that growth, with annual sales of all models increasing, driven by rising demand in markets such as China and Russia.