Supercar makers McLaren gear up for factory investment creating 200 jobs

High performance supercar manufacturers McLaren are moving into Sheffield with a £50m investment in manufacturing facilities, which will create 200 jobs.

The company is gearing up to launch a purpose-built production facility next to the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

It will be reshoring production of supercar chassis to the UK, and it is estimated that the move will inject £100m into the South Yorkshire economy.

McLaren has been involved in a “pioneering” partnership with the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre which has brought it to the region.

A production facility will now be built to produce McLaren’s lightweight carbon fibre chassis for its new models from 2020.

The new McLaren Automotive facility is due to start construction in early 2017 with the first pre-production carbon fibre chassis to be delivered to the McLaren Technology Centre in the second half of 2017. Full production at the facility will begin by 2020.

The University of Sheffield’s AMRC Training Centre will also start training McLaren apprentices who will work in the new facility and chassis will be built using trial manufacturing processes in the AMRC.

Professor Keith Ridgway, executive dean at the University of Sheffield’s AMRC, said: “This is a tremendous piece of news for the Sheffield City Region and a boost for its future as the UK’s centre for advanced manufacturing.

“In many respects it represents a new model that repositions manufacturing in Sheffield, taking it on from coal and steel to high performance components for the automotive, as well as the aerospace, sector.

“We will be working with McLaren Automotive on the construction of the carbon fibre chassis and further research, and we are talking with the supply chain. It is our ambition that supply chain companies will start to build factories here to supply the chassis plant.”

Mike Flewitt, chief executive officer of McLaren Automotive, said: “In 1981, McLaren was the first company to recognise the exceptional properties of carbon fibre, and we have designed the highly-technical material to be at the heart of every McLaren road and racing car ever since.

“The now-iconic McLaren F1 was the world’s first road car to be built with a carbon fibre chassis and every car built more recently by McLaren Automotive has the same. Creating a facility where we can manufacture our own carbon fibre chassis structures is therefore a logical next step.”

He added: “We evaluated several options to achieve this objective but the opportunity created by the AMRC at the University of Sheffield was compelling. At the AMRC, we will have access to some of the world’s finest composites and materials research capabilities, and I look forward to building a world-class facility and talented team at the new McLaren Composites Technology Centre.”

The new centre hopes to deliver cost savings of around £10m and £100m of gross value added benefit to the local economy by 2028.

 

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