Jaguar Land Rover halts production at Castle Bromwich

JLR cites supplier issues as reason for temporary closure, despite drop in sales of models produced there throughout the year

Production has been largely halted at Jaguar Land Rover’s Castle Bromwich plant due to a “supplier issue related to Covid” causing delivery delays, the company has confirmed.

First revealed in the Guardian on Friday, production of Jaguar’s XE and XF saloons is said to have stopped during last week and is not planned to restart for a further two weeks. However, the newspaper reports that the line is still running for the F-Type sports car. 

JLR has insisted that the disruption is not a result of reported congestion at England’s ports - an issue that cause Honda to halt production at its Swindon plant last week. That factory, where the Civic is produced, is due to restart assembly today. 

The port congestion is claimed to be a mixture of an increased number of imports of products for consumers at Christmas and some companies’ electing to stockpile to prevent potential disruption in a no-deal Brexit scenario. 

Castle Bromwich was closed along with most of the UK's manufacturing output during the first coronavirus lockdown in March. However, it was one of the last factories to resume production, not commencing again until August. 

The Jaguar brand has been hit hard throughout 2020 from what was already relatively low sales of its core model; the XE and XF. Between April and September 46,134 models were registered by the brand - down 40% on the same period in 2019. 

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