JLR launches new Discovery alongside 50 new products pledge

VEHICLE manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover, has launched the first member of its new Discovery family alongside a pledge to produce 50 new products over the next five years.

The new Discovery Sport, which fits between the Land Rover and Range Rover brands, will be built at JLR’s Halewood plant on Merseyside, where the company has created 250 new jobs to enable the production programme to go ahead.

The company has also invested around £200m to support the development of the new Discovery family – just part of the £3.5bn investment Jaguar Land Rover is making this year as it rolls-out its global production strategy.

Phil Popham, Jaguar Land Rover Group Marketing Director, said: “The new Discovery Sport is an exciting development for the Land Rover Discovery family and demonstrates our commitment to continued investment in new models and innovation. This is also great news for our award-winning plant at Halewood and we remain committed to championing high quality production in the UK.”

The new Discovery will go on sale from January 2015 and pricing for the Discovery Sport SD4 model will start at £32,395. It will be on sale alongside the existing seven-seat Land Rover Discovery.

As has become the norm for JLR in recent years, it has declined to go into detail about the 50 new products but the production roster is likely to feature further variants of the Discovery family, a replacement for the Defender (which ends production shortly), the new Jaguar XE (which is launched next week) and a new Jaguar crossover is also thought to have received the green light.

The programme could also include special edition models being produced by the company’s new Special Vehicle Operations division.

The investment into developing the new Discovery Sport has seen Halewood considerably expand its production capacity. The additional 250 jobs bring the total number of jobs at the plant to 4,750 – more than treble the number employed there in 2010.

Richard Else, Jaguar Land Rover Halewood Operations Director, said: “In many ways, Halewood has embodied the transformation of Jaguar Land Rover. We have seen our workforce treble and production quadruple in just four years. Today we are operating three shifts, 24-hours a day to meet global demand and I am confident that the team here will deliver a flawless launch of this exciting new model.”

In addition to a £45m Aida servo press line installed in March this year, JLR has also installed 260 new automated robots, industry leading laser welding facilities and state-of-the-art equipment monitoring and reporting systems to support its strict quality control standards.

In keeping with the teaser campaign that has preceded today’s launch, Land Rover digitally revealed the new Discovery Sport at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

It marked its collaboration with Virgin Galactic by also launching the Land Rover Galactic Discovery competition, which offers four people the chance to win a trip into space abroad the Virgin Galactic starship.

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