Jaguar Land Rover offered £500m in subsidies to build battery plant in UK
The government has offered Jaguar Land Rover £500m in subsidies in an effort to persuade the carmaker to build a new electric battery plant in the UK.
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has offered a package of incentives to entice JLR, days after three global carmakers warned that Brexit rules on where parts were sourced threatened the future of the British automotive industry.
The Indian conglomerate Tata, the parent company of JLR, is in the process of deciding whether to build the new electric battery production facility in the UK or Spain.
The Treasury package includes a mixture of a cash grant, reductions in energy costs as well as covering the cost of upgrading the power network around the site JLR has identified in Somerset, according to The Times.
The government has also offered its parent company, Tata, which also owns UK businesses including Tetley Tea, a £300m package to help upgrade and decarbonise its Port Talbot steelworks facility in south Wales.
Last year, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chair of Tata, said that if the group could not negotiate significant subsidies from the government to help transition the plant’s blastfurnaces to greener production methods it would “have to look at closures of sites”.
The Port Talbot site employs about 3,500 people and is one of only two plants in Britain capable of turning iron ore and coal into molten iron and steel. Overall, the subsidiary Tata Steel UK employs about 8,000 people.
The £500m offer to JLR represents a major commitment from the UK government, with the total budget for its automotive transformation fund, which aims to support the British car industry’s shift to electric vehicles, currently only at £1bn.
Post-Brexit rules require 40% of an electric vehicle’s parts by
Read more on theguardian.com
