Engineering news
The automotive industry has received a double boost, with Nissan and Aston Martin confirming multi-million pound investments at plants across the UK.
Nissan has said that the next version of the Qashqai will be designed, engineered and built in Britain. Design and engineering of the new car will involve teams at Nissan’s European Design Centre in London and Technical Centre Europe in Cranfield, while the car will be manufactured in Sunderland. The investment is worth a total of £192 million.
The new model production will safeguard 6,000 jobs, both direct and indirect through the supply chain. Each Qashqai produced has 3,779 parts, of which 83.6% comes from the UK.
Paul Everitt, chief executive of the SMMT car industry body, said: “Nissan’s announcement is the latest in a series of positive investment stories for the UK auto industry. Manufacturing is crucial to the UK’s economic recovery and this decision demonstrates the long-term strength and global competitiveness of our sector.”
The company is already spending £420m in its Sunderland plant for the production of the Nissan LEAF electric car from 2013 and in a new stand-alone facility to make lithium-ion batteries for both Renault and Nissan vehicles from 2012.
Meanwhile, prestige carmaker Aston Martin has confirmed that production of its Rapide four-door sports car will move to the company’s Gaydon headquarters in Warwickshire in the second half of 2012.
The company appointed Magna Steyr in 2008 as a partner to produce the car at its facilities in Austria, following a feasibility study that highlighted constraints at Gaydon at that time. A dedicated facility – AMRP – at Magna Steyr’s facilities was then established, and the car reached full production in 2010.
But Dr Ulrich Bez, Aston Martin's chief executive, said that Gaydon was now ready to take over production of the Rapide. He said: “In 2008 we had facility restrictions at Gaydon which indicated that production of Rapide at Gaydon would likely compromise production of our other cars. We were not prepared to do this.
“Now, three years on things are very different – Gaydon is more established, more flexible and more efficient. While our overall volume has not changed significantly, we now produce a far richer model mix – eight model lines (plus five variants) compared to three model lines (plus two variants) in 2008 – so Rapide production is now possible.”
Work on readying Aston Martin’s Gaydon headquarters for Rapide will begin immediately with a view to production commencing in the second half of 2012.
