As many as 5,000 jobs will be lost at Jaguar Land Rover in the new year, with the UK’s biggest carmaker facing continued economic difficulties.
According to the Financial Times, the cuts will be announced in January and will form part of the company’s £2.5bn cost-cutting drive to boost short-term profitability. That plan, known as Project Charge, came on the back of Q3 financial results that saw JLR post a £90m loss from July to September. Its most recent sales figures from November showed a year-on-year drop of eight per cent, with overall sales for January to November down 4.4 per cent. The weak performance has been blamed on flagging demand in China, combined with uncertainty over diesel regulations and Brexit.
“In China, we continue to see significant market challenges but we remain focused on taking all the operational actions necessary to balance production with demand,” Felix Brautigam, JLR’s chief commercial officer, said on the back of the recent results.
In a sequence of announcements made since June 2018, JLR has revealed that production of its Discovery model would move from Solihull to Slovakia and that 1,000 workers at its Castle Bromwich plant would drop to a three-day week. The Solihull plant – which has already shed around 1,000 workers – also saw a two-week shutdown in October to compensate for the shrinking demand for JLR vehicles. The ‘operational actions’ referred to by Brautigam will now almost certainly see thousands more jobs go across the company’s Midlands plants.
The short-term Project Charge is to be succeeded by a medium-term plan known as Project Accelerate. As reported by the FT, these plans were drawn up by Boston Consulting Group under direction from Tata Motors, JLR’s parent company. Back in September, when details of the turnaround plans were first announced, JLR said it was aiming “to improve its business performance through the ongoing Charge and Accelerate transformation programmes, targeting £2.5bn of cost, cash and profit improvements over the next two years. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on speculation and rumours about potential measures that might form part of these plans.”
Alongside the estimated 5,000 jobs cuts, JLR is expected to streamline its range of vehicles over the coming years. Of the 13 models the company produces, just three – the Range Rover Velar, the new Jaguar E-Pace and the electric Jaguar I-Pace – saw sales rise in Q3 2018.
This is sad news.
But promising in that the Chinese domestic car production has dropped 20% YOY, so JLR actually appears to be holding up well,
And, why can’t our leaders see why the man on the street voted for Brexit when we keep shipping their jobs abroad? And why demand for goods drops when people don’t have jobs?
Why do we pretend that certain car manufacturers are ‘British’. JLR was bought out by TATA. This isn’t just about declining sales, though obviously its a very clear incentive to address the issue. Its about yet another non-UK business being allowed to purchase a UK Manufacturing entity at a knock-down price and being given large subsidies to keep so-called British jobs. In the end TATA now have an opportunity to shutdown a major part of its ‘UK-based’ business and move it to much more cheap labour based countries.
After all the rhetoric from the UK Government about aiding and supporting TATA during the Steel manufacturing issues etc, we now find that TATA is simply an Asset stripping company. It’s only goal is to expand into a widening spectrum of businesses.
TATA no more cares for the UK than any of the EU countries.
Its time to blacklist such companies in my view and place high Import taxes on them. Just because TATA is leaving a ‘remnant’ of themselves in the UK as a potential Import Tax reduction incentive, this does not mean that the UK should be manipulated in such a way.
Why-oh-why have consecutive governments continued to sell off the UK ‘Silver’ and left us in a precarious position.
Just to note, by that definition Guinness is a British Brand and Volvo is a Chinese one.
Guinness is by definition Irish, as I’m sure my colleague Mr Wade would insist were he in the office today. It merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo, which is a London-headquartered multinational. But as Guinness was formed in Dublin in 1759 and retains strong links with the city and country of its origin, it would be a brave or foolhardy person indeed who tried to claim it as anything other than Irish.
British company, Silver? Are you kidding? Tata bought JLR as a debt ridden operation from that Oh so British company Ford. They then invested heavily in new models and returned it to profit in three business quarters.
Nothing to do with Brexit at all, china and the rest of world is sick of the old dated look from JLR.
sales of Mercedes and BMW have gone up in china so that says it all.
As a long standing user of several of their products I have always thought it was a case of paying for the fancy badge, much of what they produce is marketed and aimed at a premium market. They lived off the enthusiast for the Defender and its proud if relatively unreliable history. Now they are no more than a fancy premium car manufacturer with nothing really to make them stand out from what were alway arguably better products from other manufacturers.
I only have one interest: that lump that used to be called Land Rover, with all the aerodynamic qualities of a shoe-box, which is now called Defender. A comment above remarks on the less than reliable Defender. True, but it has certain qualities that the other wagons do not have, that is simplicity. When Toyota Land Cruiser started to chase Range Rover they became more luxurious, complex and expensive. The last Toyota that was easy to maintain was the BJ (a dog to drive, but don’t they look gorgeous?). My thought is this: the markets in Africa and Asia are not ready for all the electronics. Mechanics in those areas love the simple stuff. One of the reasons that the Defender was ditched was that it was hand-built, separate chassis and aluminium bits don’t lend themselves to robotic welding.
Well, the company is now Indian owned, labour in India is cheaper than in Europe, why not shift the production to India? In the short term make the vehicles less dependent on complex electronics and start work on a monocoque based platform. Build pickups that farmers can use and sell them in Africa and Asia. The military application is also a market which should not be ignored. There is a future for a simple 4WD that can go on roads that are not tarmac. I wish, I wish. But I guess the bean counters have done their homework. I dream on.
As somebody who lives in South Africa, I can only say the Land Rover, which used to reign supreme in these parts decades ago, has been THOROUGHLY trounced by Toyota.
Land Rover have NEVER had a good reputation for reliability – then or now. And simple mechanics or not.
Many years ago, I was introduced to the shear reliability, longevity, and solid under-the skin robust design and solid no-skimping engineering of Toyota products, and I have never looked back!
I will not say the same about some other Japanese products whose design focus is more bling and minimal overdesign (costs, of course!) under the body shell (Nissan, I’m looking at you!). Again, from personal experience of owning one, and not being impressed once you climb underneath and see the difference from a Toyota.
For decades now, the Toyota Hilux pickup in SA and neighboring countries has been the “farners’ choice”.
Nor is it for nothing that the terrorist groups elsewhere in Africa (along with the locals) specifically favour Toyota Pickups for their activities in very arduous conditions. You wouldn’t want to be in a Land-Rover and lose a half-shaft while being chased by US Special Forces, huh?
Yeah, shafted by Land-Rover when it comes to reliability (sorry, I just had to work that in somewhere!).
Which all applies equally to both Volvo and JLR re countries of origin and brand.
Remember the enfield bullet? that is still made and loved in India and sold back to the uk . i think there have been previous attempts at saving the Defender, which has simple mechanicals – but reliability needs to be key, I remember a quote on top gear in Australia, you can go into the desert in a land rover but if you want to survive it , take a toyota – toyota also made their name in the libya/chad (?) war with Chadean ‘technicals’ even winning a victory over libyan heavy armour. At the risk of repeating myself and others, historically UK politicians have shown themselves to be unconcerned over manufacturing and UK management very short sighted and generally poor – it took a british officer (major Ian Hirst? ) to rescue VW but he was not appreciated back home- it must have been an exquisite irony when VW came to rescue the rover mini !. uk has not supported its home grown ipr and happily sold its base to foreign owners, but i contend that its not a level playing field commercially. if you do not own the means of production, you need to be just grateful of the work, and any profits made will first need to bounce off the foreign parent company , Its not just us that feels that way, Nissan were pretty cheesed off recently as they are owned by renault, which is now doing much less well than they are – so not quite ok to have an international outlook when its your jobs disappearing!