JAGUAR Land Rover (JLR) has announced plans to expand in Solihull and abroad by investing millions into its paint facilities.
The company’s plan includes opening new paint facilities in Castle Bromwich and Nitra, Slovakia.
The big cat company said it will be investing £65million to meet demand for personalised colour options, where clients can choose from hundreds of Bespoke Paint and elevated palette options across its Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models.
The move will support over 17,000 additional client orders per year and make its most exclusive paint colours available for the first time across its other brands.
As part of a £41million investment in new SVO facilities at Castle Bromwich, £26million will be injected to replace existing paint booths at the site with all new highly efficient state‑of‑the‑art application booths.
JLR say this will be installed during 2025.
Andrea Debbane, chief sustainability officer, said: “JLR is seeing a significant increase in clients wanting to personalise their vehicles, so we are preparing to expand our facilities and offer thousands more paint options across our brands, but doing so in the most sustainable and efficient way possible.
“Paint shops are very energy intensive, accounting for around 80% of our operational emissions, so they represent our biggest opportunity.
“Our long history means we have facilities with different challenges, some are newer, some much older so we need to optimise where we can, whilst at the same time investing for the long‑term so we can get where we need to be in 10, 15 20 years’ time to reach our net zero goal.”
JLR say the new paint booths use the latest most energy efficient technology and filtration techniques to cut energy and water use, and also utilise fully automated spray robots which reduce paint waste by 30 per cent versus hand painting methods, decreasing environmental impact as well as producing a higher quality finish due to unparalleled consistency and precision.
It added the expansion will provide increased capacity to support growing demand from clients choosing the SV Bespoke Paint matching service which enables clients purchasing a Range Rover SV to match to any colour they wish, offering the ultimate in personalisation.
Jamal Hameedi, director SVO, said: “SVO is all about offering our clients unparalleled performance, luxury and capability.
“That includes the most exclusive, high quality colour finishes available. Range Rover clients are increasingly choosing to tailor their vehicles with more exclusive Bespoke and elevated palette paints.
“By increasing our capacity we can satisfy the demand growth from our Range Rover clients and also expand this service for the first time to clients of our other Brands.”
Meanwhile construction of a new £10million universal paint line starts this year at Nitra in Slovakia, where Defender and Discovery are manufactured, which will see the addition of a new fully electric paint booth and new electric curing ovens.
