7:53 am, November 26, 2022
Jaguar Land Rover is to cut output at its factories and prioritise production of more profitable models.
Britain’s largest carmaker will change shift patterns at its Solihull and Halewood plants as it continues to grapple with worldwide shortages of semiconductors.
The shift changes are expected to last until March and there will be no job cuts, reported The Times.
The firm’s Solihull factory in the West Midlands will get an extra shift to make body panels for the profitable Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models.
The extra shift will come at the cost of the slower selling Velar and Jaguar F-Pace, which will see shifts cut from two to one.
Workers at JLR’s Halewood plant in Merseyside will also drop down to just one shift on the Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque production lines.
Jaguar Land Rover said: ‘We continue to actively manage the operational patterns of our manufacturing plants while the industry experiences ongoing global semiconductor supply chain disruption.
‘Demand for our vehicles remains strong. We expect our performance to continue improving in the second half of the year as new agreements with semiconductor partners take effect, enabling us to build and deliver more vehicles to our clients.’
The news comes as Jaguar Land Rover revealed earlier this month it has an order book amounting to 205,000 cars.
The Range Rover, Ranger Rover Sport and Land Rover Defender account for 70 per cent of these, hence the changes in factory shifts.
The revelation of the size of JLR’s order book came as the firm announced its Q2 earnings.
The period saw the British carmaker lose £173m – a significant improvement on the £302m it lost in the same period last year.
JLR said the losses were slashed by it ramping up production of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.
The carmaker is currently being headed up by interim CEO Adrian Mardell, after Thierry Bollore resigned for ‘personal reasons’ less than two weeks ago.
