11:05 am, April 22, 2021
Jaguar Land Rover is temporarily halting production at two of its UK plants because of the semiconductor crisis.
It announced today (Apr 22) that its Castle Bromwich and Halewood plants are to have what it called ‘a limited period of non-production’ as of Monday (Apr 26).
The pause in production will last for at least a week, it’s believed, and will affect manufacturing the Jaguar XE, XF, and F-Type as well as the Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport.
It hasn’t been confirmed yet if the affected workers will be furloughed.
Work on the Jaguar F-Pace SUV as well as other Range Rover models will continue at Solihull.
JLR’s plants in Slovakia, China and Brazil haven’t been affected as yet.
In a statement, JLR said: ‘Like other automotive manufacturers, we are currently experiencing some Covid-19 supply chain disruption, including the global availability of semiconductors, which is having an impact on our production schedules and our ability to meet global demand for some of our vehicles.
‘As a result, we have adjusted production schedules for certain vehicles.
‘We are working closely with affected suppliers to resolve the issues and minimise the impact on customer orders wherever possible.’
Yesterday (Apr 21), Renault warned that disruption caused by trying to secure semiconductors could last throughout the summer.
A fire last month at one of the world’s biggest producers of semiconductors for the car industry – Renesas Electronics in Naka, Japan – devastated production of the chips.
Production resumed on Saturday (Apr 17) and it hopes to be back to half capacity by the end of April and full capacity by the end of May.
The blaze, which was sparked by an electricity overload, wrecked 23 machines and damaged an area measuring 6,458 square feet.
The semiconductor crisis is bad news generally for the new car industry as it struggles to meet post-lockdown demand.
Other manufacturers to have paused production include Nissan, Honda, Daimler, VW and General Motors.
Stellantis, meanwhile, has said it will be replacing digital speedometers with analogue ones in the Peugeot 308 because of the shortage.
