JLR reveals UK's biggest solar panel array, and will provide more than 30% of the plants power.

Jaguar Land Rover has completed the installation of the UK’s largest rooftop solar panel array at its new state-of-the art Engine Manufacturing Centre at i54 South Staffordshire. The new facility has been designed with sustainability embedded throughout and has recently been awarded BREEAM’s ‘Excellent’ rating for the design stage of the assessment for sustainable buildings.

More than 21,000 photovoltaic panels, with a capacity of 5.8MW, have been fixed to the roof of the Engine Manufacturing Centre, with plans to increase this to over 6.3MW by the end of the year. It is estimated that the system will generate more than 30% of the Engine Manufacturing Centre’s energy requirements. This is the equivalent to the energy needed to power more than 1,600 homes. The photovoltaic panels will reduce the plant’s CO₂ footprint by over 2,400 tonnes per year.Trevor Leeks, the Engine Manufacturing Centre’s Operations Director, said, “Our world-class facility showcases the latest sustainable technologies and innovations. The completion of the UK’s largest rooftop solar panel installation here at the Engine Manufacturing Centre is just one example of this.

 

“As the first manufacturer to win the ‘Responsible Business of the Year’ last year, environmental innovation lies at the heart of Jaguar Land Rover’s business.”

Based at the heart of the UK, the state-of-the-art Engine Manufacturing Centre is the first new plant that Jaguar Land Rover has built from the ground up. The site represents an investment of more than £500 million and will create almost 1400 new jobs by the time the plant reaches full capacity.

The world-class plant will manufacture the first family of premium, advanced technology engines, Ingenium, to be entirely designed and built in-house by Jaguar Land Rover for exclusive use in the company’s future vehicles. The Jaguar XE, debuting in 2015, will be the first vehicle equipped with these four-cylinder engines. 

Jaguar Land Rover’s Engine Manufacturing Centre uses cutting-edge heating and lighting systems designed to minimise energy demand through the use of insulated cladding, to maximise daylight through the roof design and to harness natural ventilation through the use of automatic louvers.

Extensive energy monitoring facilities in the plant continually analyse the amount of energy being used and identify opportunities to reduce that energy consumption, for both electricity and natural gas.

Outside of the building, Jaguar Land Rover plans to create an ecological corridor across the bottom of its site. The corridor will be designed to encourage the natural movement of species from one side of the site to the other.

In addition, there are plans to install features such as boxes, habitat piles, dead wood stumps and insect houses to encourage small mammals, invertebrates, amphibians, bats and birds to the site.

Jaguar Land Rover won Business in the Community’s ‘Responsible Business of the Year 2013’ for placing environmental innovation at the heart of its business strategy, embedding sustainability at every stage of the product development process and all levels of the business. This week Jaguar Land Rover is celebrating ‘Responsible Business Week’ as part of Business in the Community’s national week-long campaign dedicated to sustainable business.

British prime Minister visits JLR's new powertrain plant

Jaguar Land Rover welcomed the Prime Minister David Cameron to its world-class Engine Manufacturing Centre in the West Midlands. The Prime Minister was given a tour of the new plant where he saw the on-going installation of the manufacturing equipment first hand.

Jaguar Land Rover’s state-of-the-art Engine Manufacturing Centre is the first new facility that the company has built from the ground up. Based at the heart of the UK, it is ideally located between the company’s three other manufacturing sites at Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull. Almost 1,400 jobs will be created by the time the plant reaches its full capacity.

Representing an investment of more than £500 million, the plant will manufacture Jaguar Land Rover’s most advanced engines ever. Designed and developed at the company’s Product Development Centre in Whitley, this new family of premium, lightweight, low-friction, low-emission four cylinder petrol and diesel engines will be manufactured for future Jaguar Land Rover vehicles.

The Prime Minister said, “Whenever I come to one of your plants, it makes my spirits soar when I see such an exciting future for British manufacturing. Everywhere I go in the world I support Jaguar Land Rover. This is a great British success story.”

Jaguar Land Rover’s Executive Director, Mike Wright commented, “Our world-class new facility incorporates the latest technologies meeting the highest standards of production and demonstrates our continued commitment to UK manufacturing.

“We are proud to show Prime Minister David Cameron around our plant today as our team begins to commission the equipment which will be used to manufacture our most advanced engines ever.”

The plant boasts almost 100,000 square metres of internal floor area, equivalent to the area of 14 football pitches. It comprises of three manufacturing halls – one for machining the cylinder heads, cylinder blocks and crankshafts, one for assembling diesel engines and one for assembling petrol engines. The first engines will come off the assembly line in early 2015.  

Jaguar Land Rover revving up ready to hit ground running

Jaguar Land Rover’s new engine factory near the M54 will be running around the clock virtually from the start, detailed plans revealed today.

Manager Keith Hawke in one of the huge assembly halls inside the JLR factory at the i54 site in Pendeford near Wolverhampton

scheme with a 250,000 sq ft assembly hall also includes a breakdown of worker numbers and shift patterns.

And there are also detailed plans assessing the traffic impact of the new plant and the proposal to seal it off from the Wobaston Road so that all traffic to and from the factory, apart from public transport and emergency vehicles, will use the new M54 slip road now under construction.

This will link the site directly to the motorway that runs along its northern edge. The aim will be to avoid overloading the busy Wobaston Road and the Three Tuns Roundabout.

The plans for the new building will include a faith room for religious observances, meeting rooms, kitchens, a cafe and an education centre where local schoolchildren will get the chance to learn about the world of modern hi-tech engineering, in the hope of building the new generation of engineers who will work at the plant in the years to come.

The education rooms will even include an observation deck where youngsters will be able to look out over the engine assembly hall to watch production taking place.

The new planning application to extend the factory is likely to get the go ahead from councillors by late summer, with hope of work starting by the end of the year.

In the meantime construction work is continuing on the already approved first phase of the factory, with installation now under way of the heating and ventilation equipment and plant infrastructure that need to be in place before the engine production lines can be built.

JLR has already recruited its senior management team to work alongside factory operations chief Ken Close and it is understood the company had to sift through hundreds of applications for the handful of jobs.

The factory team will be based at the factory from the start of next year, and the first phase of major workforce recruitment is expected to start shortly afterwards.

Mr Hawke outside the main reception at the JLR factory on the huge i54 site

The new plans placed with South Staffordshire Council show that the factory will employ 1,100 JLR staff and 200 contractor employees. It is estimated that 867 of these will be production employees mostly working in the huge machining and assembly halls.

While shifts in the machining hall will run from 6am to 4.30pm and from 4.30pm to 3am, shift patterns in the two assembly halls leave a gap for a potential third shift. Currently they are planned to run from 7.15-7.30am until 4.15-4.30pm and from 8.15-8.30pm until 5.15-5.30am.

The new wing to the factory occupies space previously set aside for car parking, so that has all been redrawn to provide a total of 1,040 car parking spaces to the south and east of the complex.

JLR is also proposing a landscaped wildlife corridor along the southern boundary of the site as part of landscaping work.

Next year will see the factory’s workforce recruited and factory equipment installed and tested, with practice production runs before the first engines intended for new cars start running off the line early in 2015.

Jaguar Land Rover says the factory will make a series of more ecologically friendly in-line four cylinder diesel and petrol engines for its next generation of saloons and 4x4s.

Currently only the hugely popular ‘baby’ Range Rover, the Evoque, is powered by four-cylinder engines, supplied by Ford.

What is expected over the next two years are a series of smaller, lighter models to be mated to the new cleaner but powerful engines from Wolverhampton.

JLR is spending around £2.7 billion in the current year on new factories and developing cars, with around 40 new and refreshed models expected over five years.

Details on what is planned are being kept wrapped in strict secrecy.

But recent moves to significantly expand the footprint of the Jaguar factory at Castle Bromwich seem to point to plans to increase the range of models bearing the historic leaping cat insignia.

Another indication would be last month’s sales figures that showed demand for Jaguars in China – now JLR’s biggest single market – had doubled on May 2012.

Recent figures have surfaced – although JLR say they didn’t come from them – suggesting the company is gearing up for a major jump in sales in 2015, from around 400,000 this year to 540,000, and up to 640,000 in 2016.

More great news from JLR

Jaguar Land Rover is set to deliver a huge boost to the automotive sector by revealing it is doubling the size of its new engine plant in the West Midlands.

The rapidly expanding car giant is going to create 700 extra jobs at its new i54 plant in Wolverhampton by investing £500 million to double capacity – before it has even opened.

Insiders say the move came after global demand has continued to rise since the plans were first announced.

Initially the company said it would invest more than £350 million in the factory, creating more than 700 jobs, but the new plans will now see up to 1,500 jobs created.

An insider told the Birmingham Post: "Sales are going incredibly well. Market share is up and they believe they need to act quickly, even though the first phase is not constructed yet."

The factory on the i54 site, between Wolverhampton and Telford, will build engines for Jaguars and Land Rovers and is expected to be ready to start engine production in 2014.

The Gaydon-based luxury car maker is planning to more than double the number of its vehicles made annually to 600,000 by 2020