West Midlands auto industry buoyed by investment bonanza
MULTI-BILLION pound investment in the UK motor industry has been hailed as a tremendous boost to the region’s automotive supply chain and the economy in general.
The past week has seen Aston Martin announce it is bringing the Rapide saloon back to Warwickshire, BMW commit to a £500m investment in the development of the new Mini and Nissan commit production of the new Qashqai to its UK plant in Sunderland.
There is also increasing speculation that Jaguar Land Rover will shortly announce Wolverhampton as the winner in the race for the location of its proposed new engine plant and the promise of hundreds of new jobs.
Rachel Eade, of MAS-Auto, said: “What a week this has been for the UK automotive industry, with three massive announcements pointing to a long-term commitment to building cars in this country.
“This will safeguard approx 11,000 jobs directly, but the spin-on effect is massive within the supply chain and you would clearly expect there to be more employment opportunities within component firms.
“I think it also proves the appetite of global car producers to build vehicles in the UK as the world class nature of our plants and companies supporting them make us extremely competitive and a great place for design and innovation.”
The BMW Group said the investment in the new Mini would be spread over the next three years. The latest pledge takes the company’s investment across all its UK operations to more than £1.5bn since 2000.
“We have started preparing our UK plants for production of the next generation MINI and this investment underlines that the UK will remain the heart of MINI production,” said Norbert Reithofer, chairman of the board of management at BMW.
“The Mini brand has made a significant contribution to BMW Group’s success in markets around the world and we anticipate that this will grow further in the future.”
The BMW Group chairman outlined his company’s plans for further investment at a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron. The investment, the majority of which will be will be used to create new production facilities and equipment at the Mini plant in Oxford, will help to safeguard over 5,000 jobs in the Mini assembly plant in Oxford plus the pressings plant in Swindon and the company’s engine plant at Hams Hall.
The Hams Hall plant set a new annual production record in 2010 with 385,051 engines, representing 16% of total UK engine production. Four-cylinder petrol engines manufactured at Hams Hall are for both Mini and BMW models.
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