In Talks with Jaguar Land Rover’s David Smith

There has been a lot happening at JLR. The company was taken over by Tata Motors last year and is now being handled by the international division of the company. Tata Motors recently announced that they will be gradually shutting down one of the main manufacturing units of JLR in West Midland and the whole process will be completed by 2014. David Smith is the managing director at Jaguar Land Rover and recently talked about company’s future plans.

The initial aim of the company is to achieve a sales growth of at least 300,000 units annually as sales have seen drastic slump in past few months. He also stated that the sales figures expected are more than 3,00,000 as the market are revving up again and China alone accounts for 2,50,000 sales of premium cars. There is a growing demand in Russia and India as well.

JLR is coming up with a new Range Rover LRX model thus the company will have nine models put together including new and existing ones. He also stated that the company is also contemplating its options to manufacture its range of premium cars away from the UK.

Regarding closure of its Midlands plant, he stated that the unions have taken the decision in their stride and only have issues regarding the pensions. Rest everything has been well-received. The company intends to bring down economies of scale and produce cost-effective cars rather than operate at two plants and make losses.

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