Jaguar Land Rover UK shutdown over Brexit

Jaguar Land Rover in the United Kingdom has declared it will go into a week’s forced factory shutdown in April, which shouldn’t affect its fast-selling electric I-Pace built in Graz, Austria.

In anticipation of prime minister Teresa May’s Brexit deal set to be announced on March 29, the British carmaker’s Liverpool, Birmingham and Wolverhampton factories will remain stopped following a regular holiday period.

JLR says in a statement, “We have confirmed this year’s holiday dates to employees across all sites.”

“As part of this, we have also confirmed that there will be an additional week of production stand-down 8th – 12th April due to potential Brexit disruption,” the company states.

Company chief executive Ralf Speth told the BBC

JLR is already looking at “unprecedented disruption” by having to cut 4500 jobs from its British workforce.

Speth described the job cuts as, “Decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions as well as technology challenges facing the automotive industry”.

Despite a £90 million pre-tax loss in the quarter to September 30 last year, JLR had made a £385 million profit in 2017, and the launch of the E-Pace and I-Pace in 2018 delivered Jaguar’s best annual sales results of 180,833 cars (up 1.2%) and a 7.2% windfall for December 2018 alone.

Land Rover was down 4.6% in 2018 over 2017.