JLR Earmarks £200 Million for Halewood Plant to Build New Discovery Sport

Jaguar Land Rover confirms it will build the upcoming Land Rover Discovery Sport compact SUV at its Halewood, U.K., plant, outside Liverpool.

The decision will see JLR boost the operation’s workforce by 250 people, increasing the number of jobs at Halewood to 4,750, more than triple 2010 levels.

JLR CEO Ralf Speth says he’s delighted Halewood – and Liverpool – has been selected for the new investment.

“It is totally deserved, and strengthens the ‘special relationship' that bonds Jaguar Land Rover to this great city,” he says in a statement.

The Halewood plant, already home to JLR’s fastest-ever selling model, the Range Rover Evoque, gets a £200 million ($340.5 million) investment to support the introduction of the first member of the all-new Land Rover Discovery range.

This takes the total spending on Halewood over the past four years to almost £500 million ($851.7 million).

The Discovery Sport, which goes on sale in 2015, was inspired by the Discovery Vision Concept unveiled at this year’s Beijing Auto Show.

JLR Halewood Operations Director Richard Else says the plant has embodied the transformation of JLR.

“We have seen our workforce treble and production quadruple in just four years,” Else says. “Today we are operating three shifts, 24 hours a day to meet global demand and I am confident that the team will rise to the challenge and deliver a flawless launch of this exciting new model.”

JLR has doubled investment in the plant since 2010.

In addition to a £45 million ($76.7 million) Aida servo press line opened last March, JLR has installed 260 automated robots, industry leading laser-welding facilities and a number of state-of-the-art equipment-monitoring systems to improve quality.

The automaker will spend about £3.5 billion ($5.96 billion) in product creation and capital expenditure in the financial year to March 2015.

Halewood launched the best-selling Evoque in 2011. Within two years the plant had produced more than 200,000 vehicles, a record volume for a single vehicle line at any JLR facility. Evoque sales in May were up 12% from year-ago with more than 80% of production exported to 170 global markets.

Tata-owned JLR last year sold 425,006 vehicles, up 19%, with Jaguar accounting for 76,668 and Land Rover 348,338.