JLR has announced a £500 million investment to transform its Halewood facility in Merseyside for electric vehicle production. The 61-year-old factory, originally built in 1963 to produce the Ford Anglia, is undergoing extensive renovations to support the parallel production of electric, hybrid, and internal combustion engine vehicles.
The company has already invested £250 million in new production lines, machinery, and digital technology, with plans to inject an additional £250 million in the coming years. The transformation has involved over one million hours of construction work in the past 12 months, extending the site by 32,364 square meters to produce JLR’s medium-sized electric luxury SUVs on the new Electric Modular Architecture (EMA) platform.
Barbara Bergmeier, Executive Director of Industrial Operations, said: “Halewood will be our first all-electric production facility, and it is a testament to the brilliant efforts by our teams and suppliers who have worked together to equip the plant with the technology needed to deliver our world-class luxury electric vehicles.”
The revamped facility now features 750 autonomous robots, ADAS calibration rigs, laser alignment technology, and cloud-based digital plant management systems. JLR has also focused on sustainability, with plans to install 18,000 photovoltaic panels that will produce 8,600 GWh of energy, accounting for 10% of the site’s energy consumption.
As part of its Future Skills Programme, JLR is investing £20 million annually across all sites to retrain employees in new technologies and processes. At Halewood, 1,600 employees have completed High Voltage Training, with more to follow.
This investment aligns with JLR’s Reimagine strategy, which aims to electrify all its brands by 2030 and achieve carbon net zero across its supply chain, products, and operations by 2039.
