JLR considers a manufacturing facility in India

Tata Motor owned Jaguar Land Rover is contemplating to manufacture vehicles in India. The British brand is keen to look at options to build its cars and expand its manufacturing facility beyond the U.K. Tata Motors is also considering the option as producing the JLR vehicles in its home ground would also help in reducing the price tag of this luxury brand.

A company official revealed that like Brazil, India is also one of the possibilities for Jaguar Land Rover to fully manufacture its cars. However, the process is in the initial stage and there is yet no confirmation of the development of the JLR manufacturing plant in India.

Developing a car in India would help Jaguar Land Rover save on government taxes and reduce labor costs as well. Moreover, India recently incresed the import duty on imported cars to 100 percent of its cost, from 75 percent. Thus, JLR vehicles which are fully imported would save on a lot of duty charges.

While, the brand JLR assembles the Jaguar XF sedan and the Land Rover Freelander sport utility vehicle at the production facility of its parent company, Tata Motors, it imports fully built cars such as the XK and XJ sedans, as well as the Evoque and Discovery SUVs.

A complete manufacturing plant in India would really help Tata Motors to take a leap over its German rivals Audi that only assemble its cars in India.

However, a manufacturing facility would mean an investment of about 25 billion rupees, but JLR does not record enough sales enough in India to compensate such a huge investment.

Tata Motors purchased the Jaguar and Land Rover brand names for a whopping $2.3 billion from Ford Motor Co. back in the year 2008. Jaguar Land Rover currently has three plants in the U.K. with an upcoming plant in China, and also plans to set up a plant in Brazil.