The British car industry has been a staple of industrial production in this country for many years, with names such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls Royce and Bentley gaining international renown for the high quality of vehicles distributed worldwide every year. And it appears that this trend is set to continue, with ever higher levels of investment by some of the world’s best known brands being channelled into British industrial commercial properties.
In fact, British car manufacturing commercial properties are on target to break a 40 year record, it was announced this week. It is predicted that by 2015 the number of cars assembled in British automotive commercial properties annually will top 2 million – fantastic news for not only the industry, but also the economy and those currently seeking employment.
Over the past 18 months, investments worth over £5.5 billion have been pumped into the British automotive industry, geared towards increasing production, inventing new designs for big names and increasing employment opportunities within existing automotive commercial properties. This is partly because, for the first time since 1976, the UK is exporting more cars than it imports, signalling a boom time for commercial properties involved in car manufacturing.
Most recently, Vauxhall demonstrated their confidence in the UK automotive industry by choosing to invest in their Ellesmere Port commercial property, rather than in German commercial property production plants which it deemed less competitive. As a result, an extra £125 million will be funnelled into the Cheshire commercial property, safeguarding the jobs of the current 2,100 employees and creating a further 700 jobs in the local area. The factory will now operate round the clock, and will be the sole manufacturers of the new Astra model.
However, Vauxhall are by no means the only big name investing in UK automotive commercial properties. In the past two months alone, Jaguar Land Rover, Honda and Nissan have all revealed plans to expand their commercial properties by way of massive investment into the industry, also creating hundreds of jobs in each of their respective locations.
Jaguar Land Rover has committed to investing £1 billion into the UK automotive industry over the next four years – a large part of this involves their new logistics facility managed by DHL. It will be located in Ellesmere Port and is expected to create upwards of 300 new jobs.
Meanwhile, Honda has taken on 500 new employees at their Swindon commercial property, swelling the number of workers based there to 3,500. This, they hope, will allow them to double their production units to 180,000 thanks to more flexibility with shifts.
Finally, Nissan’s commercial property production plant in Sunderland will be the sole manufacturers of the company’s new hatchback model, bringing the total levels of investment at this plant alone to over £900 million in recent years. This announcement also revealed the creation of 225 jobs at the Sunderland commercial property, as well as an additional 900 openings for new employees in the supply chain.
The announcement that the UK is on track to beat the current record of 1.92 million vehicles manufactured in a single year, set in 1972, was made ahead of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders’ (SMMT) annual conference in Canary Wharf, London.
SMMT Chief Executive, Paul Everitt, says; “The UK automotive industry is leading economic recovery with increased manufacturing output, growing export volumes and new jobs being created on the back of major international investment in the sector.
“Our engineering expertise, workforce flexibility and renowned motoring heritage, combined with top level collaboration between industry and government, makes the UK an important location for the global automotive industry.”
Since the beginning of 2012, the car manufacturing industry had shown an 11.8 increase in production when compared to the same time last year. Should these figures continue to climb, UK automotive commercial properties can expect to output a combined total of 1.55 million vehicles by January 2013.
Do you think British automotive commercial properties have the ability to become global leaders in the car manufacturing industry? Or do you believe that competition from developing nations such as India and China will overshadow the successes of the UK?
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