Jaguar Land Rover, the British luxury automaker owned by the multinational conglomerate, Tata Group is considering the assembly of Jaguar Land Rover cars in Saudi Arabia in a bid to reap the benefits from the upcoming multi-billion integrated aluminium complex in the country. Since the car maker is spearheading to ramp up the utilisation of aluminium content in its models, the development of this aluminium centre will economise the production costs.
Mr. Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Group, was quoted as saying on the company’s plan for JLR cars, "This smelter could make the production of aluminium in Saudi Arabia very competitive. So taking a really long-term view, if we put an assembly plant there with a large press shop, given our commitment to aluminium in our products, we could have an interesting business case which we are examining today."
While the rolling mill and the smelter are scheduled to be operative in the year 2013 at Ras Al Khair in Saudi Arabia, the aluminium refinery will come to operation in 2014.
Ma'aden, a leading Saudi Arabian mining firm has shook hands with Alcoa Inc. (Aluminium Company of America), the world’s third largest producer of Aluminium to undertake a $10.8 billion project of building the world’s largest vertically integrated aluminium complex.
An assembly plant at China in alliance with Chery Automobile was announced by Jaguar Land Rover in the earlier phase of this year with an infusion of 3.5 billion yuan. The assembly operations at the plant are set to commence with an initial production capacity of 50,000 units.
