New Discovery to roll off production line

THE new Land Rover Discovery Sport will roll off the production line at Jaguar Land Rover’s Halewood plant this morning.

The group, owned by India’s Tata, has created a further 250 jobs and invested £200m at Halewood to cater for the new model.

Some 260 robots have been installed along with laser welding facilitates and a number of state-of-the-art equipment monitoring and reporting systems.

This expansion has taken the number of staff at the Merseyside factory to 4,750, three times the number employed there in 2010. The rapid growth has been down to the success of the Evoque which has become the group’s top-selling model, with 200,000 having been produced at the factory.

JLR describes the Discovery Sport, which will go on sale next year, as “the most versatile and capable vehicle in the compact SUV segment”. It is planning a family of Discovery vehicles, inspired by the “Discovery Vision Concept” which was showcased at the New York International Auto Show.