The UK Government is to support Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) with a guarantee expected to unlock up to £1.5 billion to offer financial help and much-needed liquidity to its supply chain following a recent cyber-attack.
The loan from a commercial bank, backed by the Export Development Guarantee (EDG) provided by export credit agency UK Export Finance, will be paid back over five years and bolster JLR’s cash reserves so it can support its supply chain which has been greatly impacted by the manufacturing shutdown through the month of September.
Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle said: “This cyber-attack was not only an assault on an iconic British brand, but on our world-leading automotive sector and the men and women whose livelihoods depend on it.
“Following our decisive action, this loan guarantee will help support the supply chain and protect skilled jobs in the West Midlands, Merseyside and throughout the UK.”
With plants in Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, plus Halewood in Merseyside, JLR is one of the UK’s largest exporters and a major employer – employing 34,000 directly in its UK operations. It also operates the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, much of it made up of SMEs, and employing around 120,000 people.
The company took its systems offline and halted manufacturing operations after a cyber-attack at the end of August. It is planning to resume manufacturing operations on October 1st.
Last week, JLR said that as part of a phased restart of operations, ‘sections of our digital estate are now up and running’. It also said the ‘foundational work of our recovery programme is firmly underway’ and that it has significantly increased IT processing capacity for invoicing.
‘We are now working to clear the backlog of payments to our suppliers as quickly as we can’, it said in a statement.
