Jaguar Land Rover opens manufacturing plant in China

(October 22, 2014) CHANGSHU, China — Jaguar Land Rover has announced the opening of its inaugural overseas manufacturing facility, in China. The award-winning Range Rover Evoque will be the first model to be built under the first Chinese-British automotive joint venture with Chery Automobile Company Ltd.

The plant inauguration of Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Company follows the two-year construction of a factory, which is almost 400,000 square-meters. Located in the Changshu Economic Development Zone north of Shanghai, the factory is part of a RMB 10.9 billion joint venture investment plan.

By 2016, the facility is expected to be building three Jaguar Land Rover models with total production capacity of 130,000 units a year. Those vehicles will be manufactured in highly-automated press shops — including cutting-edge aluminum and steel technologies — along with a steel body shop comprising 306 robots, an energy-efficient paint shop and an ergonomically-friendly final assembly line. A new aluminum body shop, the first in China, is already under construction at the Changshu facility, to support the introduction of new Jaguar products.

Jaguar Land Rover first established a presence in China just over a decade ago and has a long-term commitment to its Chinese customers. Once fully operational, output from the new state-of-the-art facility will include new derivatives and models specially designed for the Chinese market.

In the last fiscal year, Jaguar Land Rover sold more than 100,000 vehicles in China, making it Jaguar Land Rover’s single largest market.