Jaguar Land Rover to build new Discovery Sport on Merseyside

CAR giant Jaguar Land Rover has announced a £200m boost for its plant at Halewood, Merseyside, where it will manufacture the new Discovery Sport.

This will secure 250 new jobs at the site, where the it already builds the Range Rover Evoque. The plan will boost the numbers employed at Halewood to 4,750.

Richard Else, operations director at the plant, said yesterday that it now operated 24 hours a day with staff working a rotation of three shifts.

The news was welcomed by the Unite union, whose national officer for the automotive industries Roger Maddison said: “These new jobs are an important stepping stone to the creation of more such highly skilled jobs. The UK car industry has gone through a renaissance in the last decade and is once again at the forefront of British manufacturing, producing high quality vehicles, many of which are exported abroad.”

The company has already invested £500m at the site over the past four years, installing robots and monitoring equipment. UK car production is up 3.5 per cent in the year to date, as several marques ramp up production of new models, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders.