JLR reveals tumbling sales as it is set to restart production after shutdown

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has revealed a sharp drop in sales over recent months as it prepares to restart production across its UK sites on Wednesday after weeks of disruption following a cyber attack.

The British carmaker said it had been a “challenging quarter” as it also grappled with the impact of higher US tariffs.

It revealed sales fell by 17.1% to 85,495 units between July and September, compared with the same period a year ago, with UK sales dropping by nearly a third.

The volume of wholesales tumbled by 24.2% year on year to 66,165 units.

JLR said this partly reflected a production freeze since the start of September after being targeted by hackers, which has caused significant disruption to its global operations.

But it is set to restart manufacturing operations on Wednesday at its engine plant in Wolverhampton and its battery assembly centre in Coleshill, Birmingham, on Wednesday.

It will also restart the firm’s stamping operations in Castle Bromwich, Halewood in Merseyside, and Solihull, on Wednesday, together with key areas of its Solihull vehicle production plant, such as its body shop, paint shop and its logistics operations centre, which feed parts to the group’s global manufacturing sites.

JLR said this will be “closely followed” later this week by operations at its vehicle manufacturing in Nitra, Slovakia, as well as the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport production lines in the Solihull facility.

Furthermore, the carmaker unveiled plans for a new financing scheme for struggling suppliers to fast-track payments, with cash up-front for qualifying firms suffering from the fallout of the hack.

“It has been a challenging quarter for JLR,” chief executive Adrian Mardell said.

“In the first two months our performance was robust and in line with our expectations, against the backdrop of the planned wind down of legacy Jaguar models and the impact of incremental US tariffs.

“From the start of September, we have been responding to a cyber incident, which shut down our production.

“This morning we announced the phased restart of JLR’s manufacturing operations following the cyber incident.

“We know there is much more to do but our recovery is firmly under way.”

The latest sales performance comes after a tougher period for the business which has been affected by US President Donald Trump increasing tariffs on automotive imports.

Sales were sliding earlier on in the year partly as a result of it halting new shipments to the US in April, prior to a trade agreement being struck.

UK sales have also been affected by JLR stopping selling older Jaguar models in the country, as it shifts production to new electric models.

JLR has the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, which employs around 120,000 people and is largely made up of small and medium-sized businesses.

The Government recently announced it would underwrite a £1.5 billion loan guarantee to JLR to give suppliers some certainty over payments, helping bolster JLR’s cash reserves, but calls mounted for more to be done.

JLR said on Tuesday that its extended support package would see suppliers paid much faster than under the usual payment terms, by as much as 120 days early.

It will start with qualifying JLR suppliers seen as critical to the restart of production, then will be expanded to cover some non-production suppliers who have also been affected.

JLR also vowed to pay back financing costs for those JLR suppliers who use the scheme during the restart phase.