Jaguar Land Rover has largely halted production at its Castle Bromwich plant because of COVID-related supplier issues. This has already caused delivery delays according to the carmaker.
While production on the Jaguar XE and XF was indeed stopped, Autocar reports that the production line for the F-Type sports car is still operational.
However, JLR insists that this disruption is not a result of congestion at British ports, which was the reason for Honda having to stop production at its Swindon plant last week.
Read Also: JLR Sales Boss Not Ready To Give Up On XE and XF Saloons
Honda’s issue is said to have popped up because of an increasing number of consumer orders for Christmas, with some companies also stockpiling goods in anticipation of the Brexit transition period ending on January 1st.
The Castle Bromwich plant was also closed back in March due to the first COVID-19 wave, along with most of the UK’s manufacturing output. The JLR facility was however one of the last factories to resume production, having idled until August.
Jaguar in particular has been hit hard this year, with its XE and XF saloons raking in modest sales – 46,134 units sold between April and September, a 40% drop compared to the same period last year. Interestingly enough, JLR UK sales boss, Scott Dicken, previously said that the XE and XF remain a key part of their range and that they’re better than they’ve ever been.
“While it’s a challenging market, [saloons] are a very important product for us. We need to look at the lifetime benefit not only for us but also retailers. The XE and XF are really strong used cars,” he stated back in November.
