Jaguar's plan may not be so secret anymore but the British luxury carmaker is still keeping to its ambitious goals.
Because of the economic slowdown in China's economy, Jaguar Land Rover's overall sales have nosedived, falling as much 32 percent just this year.
As a result, the automotive company's plans are twofold: cut costs and push production. The not-so-secret plan called "Leap 4.5" includes Jaguar Land Rover shaving off as much as $6.8 billion in its cost cutting plan while at the same time pumping out as many as 1 million vehicles off the production every year.
Of course, it will take quite a bit of time to achieve their ambitious goals and that's why the company hopes to have accomplished its Leap 4.5 plan by the end of the decade. Surprisingly, however, Jaguar Land Rover was considered to be one of the UK's automotive success stories after having been bought by India's Tata Motors from Ford for almost $2 billion in 2008.
In fact, just last year, the Jaguar Land Rover turned things around and made almost $4 billion in profit. As of 2015, the company maintains a staff of about 37,000 and produces 500,000 cars a year. It's current expansion includes additional plants in China, India, and Brazil, renovations in three British plants, and a slew of brand new models of cars, all totaling a cost of nearly $17 billion.
Now that it's tightening the flow of its funds, Jaguar's employees are concerned about future job cuts in the company's drive to make Leap 4.5 succeed. Spared from the newly pared down capital spending budget are research and development and the construction of new plants, so the possibility of job cuts is actually quite real.
But beyond cutting jobs to save cash and pad their bottom line, Jaguar is similarly taking measures to either slow down or completely stop hiring for new positions. In addition, the automaker intends to review their supply chains for better efficiency. Finally, the company may even build future Jaguars and Land Rovers that share similar core skeletons in the frames of their new cars.
Photo: Land Rover MENA | Flickr
