For Jaguar Land Rover, all roads lead to Slovakia - Fortune
The factory will produce a range of aluminium Jaguar Land Rover vehicles, the company said in a statement. Jaguar Land Rover anticipates that the first cars will come off the production line in 2018. Slovakia might seem like an odd choice to the automotive outsider. Mexico’s lower labor rates, free-trade agreements, and improved logistics have turned the country into an automotive assembly and manufacturing epicenter. At least seven automakers have opened new automotive assembly plants—or announced plans to—in Mexico in the past year or so. The U. S. South also continues to be a leader in automotive manufacturing. But the eastern European country has evolved into an automotive manufacturing hub in recent years with companies like Hyundai-Kia, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Volkswagen setting up shop there. “For a company like Jaguar Land Rover, where a significant portion of its sales are going to go to Europe, logistically it makes sense,” Dave Sargent, vice president of global automotive for J. D. Power and Associates, told Fortune. Jaguar Land Rover mostly likely chose Slovakia because of its relatively low labor costs, proximity to its engineering center in the UK, and its access to Germany, which is a high-quality supplier of components, Sargent says. Source: fortune.com
