This afternoon, Jaguar Landrover has confirmed 4,500 job cuts across marketing, management and administrative roles.
UK sites will be the hardest hit by the decision as the firm seeks to simplifiy its management structure.
The company employs around 44k people across its sites in the UK, including Halewood. While the majority of its marketing function is in the West Midlands, it comes just months after the firm announced a new tech operation in the North West.
Its IT and engineering teams are set to take up 2 floors of the Neo building in central Manchester.
JLR’s parent company, Tata Motors said it was seeking to “cut costs and improve cashflows” by £2.5bn.
“We are taking decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions as well as technology challenges facing the automotive industry,” said JLR’s chief executive, Ralf Speth.
“This will safeguard our future and enable vital ongoing investment into autonomous, connected, electric and shared technologies.”
This time last week, parent company, Tata Motors, announced “record breaking sales” for Jaguar Landrover in the United States.
However at the same time it has seen a dip in sales in China – which were down 44% between July and September. It’s also been hit by a slowdown in diesel sales and uncertainty over Brexit.
This morning the company released a short trading update which showed that Chinese sales had falled 21.6% over the period, which had been slightly offset by North American sales of +7.2%. However, during December, there was a 42.4% drop in Chinese sales.
“The economic slowdown in China along with ongoing trade tensions is continuing to influence consumer confidence. The impact is being felt across several industries globally,” stated Felix Brautigam, JLR’s chief commercial officer.
“Despite this we continue to work closely with retailers and are taking the necessary actions to balance production with demand in order to rejuvenate sales as part of our turnaround plan for the business.
