Tata Motors’ luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is now running its Halewood plant around the clock to meet strong demand for the Range Rover Evoque.
This is the first time the 50-year old factory, near Liverpool in northwest England, has operated a night shift. Built by Ford, it opened in the early 1960s to build Anglias and shipped its last Ford Escort in 2000. After an extensive refit, it began building Jaguar X-types in 2001 and the Land Rover Freelander was transferred there from Solihull in 2006. Evoque production was added last year.
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Since launch in July 2011, around 88,000 Evoques have been sold in 170 markets.
Last March, JLR announced that Halewood would move to 24 hour production and began hiring 1,000 new production operators, supervisors and engineers to build the Evoque and updated Freelander on three shifts, including a new night shift, which began this week.
Halewood operations director, Richard Else, said: “Our new recruits have worked hard during their assessments and extensive induction training. Many have also worked a number of trial night shifts during July, to ensure we get off to a great start.
“Moving production to three shifts and working 24 hours a day will allow us to significantly reduce the time a customer has to wait for an Evoque.”
JLR HR director Des Thurlby said: “With 4,500 employees, JLR Halewood has trebled its workforce in just three years – and the size of the workforce is now the highest it has been for 20 years.”
He said the automaker received 30,000 applications for the 1000 new jobs.
Last month, Jaguar said it was hiring 1,100 new workers for its Castle Bromwich plant west of Birmingham to cope with new models such as the XF Sportbrake (wagon) and re-engined XF and XJ models plus the upcoming F-type sportster.
JLR has created 8,000 jobs in two years. It plans to build a GBP355m engine plant in Wolverhampton – bring sourcing ‘in-house’ from the current joint venture with Ford and adding 750 jobs – plus redevelop the ‘original’ Land Rover factory in Solihull.
