Jaguar Land Rover restarting production at i54 engine plant next month after virus shutdown

The company stopped all production last month and has furloughed around half its workforce, topping up their pay to 100 per cent.

But it has now announced plans to start production engine and car production in the West Midlands and across Europe with new social distancing measures in place.

It is expected that the luxury car giant will resume engine production at its Engine Manufacturing Centre at the i54 in Wolverhampton during the week starting May 11 to enable the gradual return to vehicle production across its sites.

Bosses also confirmed plans to gradually resume vehicle production from May 18, starting with Solihull, Nitra in Slovakia and Graz in Austria. The re-start date of other plants will be confirmed in due course.

Sales in JLR's key market in China are recovering after the country was severely hit by the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan.

In a statement released today, JLR said: "In China, we are beginning to see recovery in vehicle sales and customers are returning to our showrooms.

"As countries are relaxing distancing guidelines and retailers are reopening around the world, the re-start of production at our other plants will be confirmed in due course.

"The health and wellbeing of our employees is our first priority.

"We are developing robust protocol and guidelines to support a safe return to work.

"We will adopt strict social distancing measures across our business and are currently evaluating a number of different measures to ensure we protect and reassure our workforce when they begin to return to work.

"We continue to monitor the Covid-19 situation and follow the guidance of all relevant authorities in the markets in which we operate."

Jaguar Land Rover suspended production at all its manufacturing sites in the UK, including the giant engine manufacturing centre, on March 20 because of the coronavirus situation.

It had originally intended to resume work in the week of April 20.

The group employs around 14,000 staff in the UK including 1,300 at the i54 engine plant next to the M54.

The move follows an announcement by luxury car-maker Aston Martin Lagonda that it will reopen its South Wales factory on May 5.