Reeling Jaguar Land Rover – which is still locked in the recovery period in the wake of its crippling cyber attack – has revealed a sharp drop in sales over recent months.
The news comes as Britain’s biggest car maker prepares to restart production across its UK sites on Wednesday, with vehicle manufacturer due to commence later this week having been suspended for more than five weeks.
JLR bosses said it had endured a ‘challenging quarter’ as it also grappled with the impact of higher US tariffs and registrations being strangled by its global IT shutdown in response to the 30 August cyber breach by hackers.
It revealed sales fell by 17.1 per cent to 85,495 units between July and September, compared with the same period a year ago, with UK sales dropping by nearly a third.
The volume of wholesales tumbled by 24.2 per cent year on year to 66,165 units.
Assembly line workers will return to its engine plant in Wolverhampton and its battery assembly centre in Coleshill, Birmingham, tomorrow.
It will also restart the firm’s stamping operations in Castle Bromwich, Halewood in Merseyside, and Solihull, on Wednesday, together with key areas of its Solihull vehicle production plant, such as its body shop, paint shop and its logistics operations centre, which feed parts to the group’s global manufacturing sites.
JLR said this will be ‘closely followed’ later this week by operations at its vehicle manufacturing in Nitra, Slovakia, as well as the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport production lines in the Solihull facility.
Furthermore, the car maker unveiled plans for a new financing scheme for struggling suppliers to fast-track payments, with cash up-front for qualifying firms suffering from the fallout of the hack.
Key areas of Jaguar Land Rover’s Solihull vehicle production plant (pictured) – such as its body shop, paint shop and its logistics operations centre – will restart on Wednesday, Britain’s biggest car maker has confirmed
‘It has been a challenging quarter for JLR,’ chief executive Adrian Mardell said.
‘In the first two months our performance was robust and in line with our expectations, against the backdrop of the planned wind down of legacy Jaguar models and the impact of incremental US tariffs.
‘From the start of September, we have been responding to a cyber incident, which shut down our production.
‘This morning we announced the phased restart of JLR’s manufacturing operations following the cyber incident.
‘We know there is much more to do but our recovery is firmly under way.’
The latest sales performance comes after a tougher period for the business which has been affected by US President Donald Trump increasing tariffs on automotive imports.
Sales were sliding earlier on in the year partly as a result of it halting new shipments to the US in April, prior to a trade agreement being struck.
In comments issued earlier on Tuesday Tuesday morning, Mardell said this week marks an ‘important moment’ for the businesses and its stakeholders as looks to ‘restart our manufacturing operations following the cyber incident’.
He added: ‘From tomorrow, we will welcome back our colleagues at our engine production plant in Wolverhampton, shortly followed by our colleagues making our world-class cars at Nitra and Solihull.
‘Our suppliers are central to our success, and today we are launching a new financing arrangement that will enable us to pay our suppliers early, using the strength of our balance sheet to support their cash flows.’
‘We know there is much more to do, but our recovery is firmly underway,’ he added.
Production of vehicles at JLR’s plants across the UK, in Slovakia, Brazil, and India has been paralysed for over five weeks following the 30 August cyber attack
The fallout from the cyber attack, which was carried out late on Sunday 30 August, has crippled JLR to the point where it has not produced a single vehicle in September or thus far in October
JLR said it would update further on the next steps of its ‘controlled restart’, including its Halewood plant in Merseyside.
The group has halted all manufacturing since the start of September after being targeted by hackers.
It currently employs more than 30,000 workers in the West Midlands and on Merseyside.
Experts have warned the production shutdown could hit the group’s bottom line by around £120million, with the firm usually thought to build about 1,000 cars a day.
The pause has also left its suppliers in limbo, leading to fears that small firms producing parts for the car giant could collapse without financial support.
JLR has the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, which employs around 120,000 people and is largely made up of small and medium-sized businesses.
The Government recently announced it would underwrite a £1.5billion loan guarantee to JLR to give suppliers some certainty over payments, helping bolster JLR’s cash reserves, but calls mounted for more to be done.
JLR said on Tuesday that its extended support package would see suppliers paid much faster than under the usual payment terms, by as much as 120 days early.
It will start with qualifying JLR suppliers seen as critical to the restart of production, then will be expanded to cover some non-production suppliers who have also been affected.
JLR also vowed to pay back financing costs for those JLR suppliers who use the scheme during the restart phase.
The firm said it will also publish second-quarter results later on Tuesday.
Assembly line workers will return to its engine plant in Wolverhampton and its battery assembly centre in Coleshill, Birmingham, tomorrow. It will also restart the firm’s stamping operations in Castle Bromwich and Halewood in Merseyside (pictured) on Wednesday
JLR says the Defender and Discovery assembly lines in Nitra, Slovakia, as well as the wider Range Rover and Range Rover Sport production lines in the Solihull facility, will commence later this week
In the last week, Renault has also confirmed that it has been caught up in its own cyber breach.
Renault Group UK emailed drivers to confirm that a third-party data processing business used by the car firm was targeted by hackers.
As a result, ‘some customers’ personal data has been taken from one of their systems,’ Renault said.
It has been reported that some owners and customers of Dacia vehicles, which are also made by Renault, have also been affected.
The company stressed that no financial data, such as bank account details, or password data was compromised in the attack.
But it said data accessed in the hack included some or all of: customer names, addresses, dates of birth, gender, phone number, vehicle identification numbers and vehicle registration details.
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