Thousands of jobs are on the line at the Ford Premier Automotive Group Land Rover and Jaguar plants, a British newspaper said on Thursday.
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The Sun said the jobs may be axed as the plants – Land Rover’s Lode Lane, Solihull facility near Birmingham, and a Jaguar plant in Coventry – fight for survival.
The report said Ford has warned it may shut the two factories and has already told workers at the Solihull factory the Land Rover plant was in doubt. Ford could also shut Jaguar’s main Coventry factory – where the XJ8 and XK8 model lines are assembled – within two years with the loss of up to 2,500 jobs, the Sun added.
Premier Automotive Group lost £202 million ($US361.4 million) in the last quarter, The Sun added.
According to the newspaper, PAG head Mark Field on Wednesday rejected a survival plan proposed for Solihull and has given the management and its 8,000 workers a week to rewrite it.
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By GlobalDataJaguar and Land Rover chairman Joe Greenwell reportedly told The Sun: “We want to succeed with Land Rover and keep Solihull. We won’t accept a fudge.”
The paper noted that production of the next-generation Land Rover Freelander will be moved next year to the Jaguar X Type factory on Merseyside, shifting 1,000 Solihull jobs to the Halewood factory.
According to the Sun, Field said: “We’re talking about the future of the plant and the team has to deliver.”
Separately, former senior Ford executive and just-auto columnist Karl Ludvigsen reportedly told a BBC radio news programme that there may be an economic case to close Lode Lane.
Spokespersons for Land Rover and Ford have so far declined to comment directly on the reports, the BBC said. They said only that the aim is for Solihull to remain a Land Rover factory.
