One of the first major investment decisions by Tata Motors at its new British Jaguar Land Rover subsidiary is to rubber stamp a significant expansion at the Halewood plant on Merseyside (near Liverpool) that will double output by 2012.
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Land Rover has two new models in its product plan for introduction by 2012 that will add an extra 140,000 units of capacity.
The first of the new models is code-named project L513, the production version of the LRX concept.
Land Rover is planning this model in a volume of 70,000 units, about the same as currently installed for the Freelander, with production slated for 2011, according to well-placed sources.
Land Rover refused to comment. “We don’t discuss future model plans,” the company told just-auto.
The L513 is being developed as a variant of Ford’s EU-CD platform which also underpins the Freelander, and future use of the intellectual property of this design had been subject to intense scrutiny during the US$2.3bn Tata takeover.
The second new model for Halewood is called project L486. It is understood to be a seven-seat vehicle and to be a body and styling variant of the LRX rather than the Freelander. Project L486 is also planned in a volume of 70,000 units.
This new model is slated for start-up in 2012, one year after the LRX.
Added together with production of the Freelander, Halewood is being planned around production of 210,000 Land Rovers, a much healthier and more profitable level than today’s 100,000 units.
Currently it is making around 65,000 Freelanders and 35,000 Jaguar X-Types a year, meaning the plant – built in the mid-1960s to assemble the Ford Anglia – is on a course to double its output.
Since the future of the X-Type past 2010 is still not assured, it now looks likely that the entry-level Jaguar will die in mid-2010 to make way for new production lines for the two new Land Rover models.
Under Ford management, capacity at Halewood was re-rated in 2001 to 120,000 to make the new X-Type, but poor sales meant the plant struggled to hit capacity.
Land Rover then moved Freelander production there from Solihull in 2006, using a flexible manufacturing system so that the two different saloon and SUV bodystyles could be assembled on the same line.
Julian Rendell
