Nissan and McLaren announce major UK investments
Nissan and McLaren have announced major new investments in the UK automotive sector totalling a combined £700m.
Nissan has confirmed it will build its new hybrid Kicks model at its plant in Sunderland, investing £170m in the site, while McLaren has unveiled plans to invest £500m in manufacturing and research across UK sites, creating 1,000 jobs.
Addressing the Nissan investment, Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “This announcement is a major boost for Nissan Sunderland, the thousands of highly skilled jobs it supports and the wider local supply chain. It is also another vote of confidence in UK automotive manufacturing with its world-class workforce, innovation and engineering excellence.
“The UK sector has the fundamental strengths to secure growth. But to unlock that potential, we must continue to strengthen our competitiveness – supporting a healthy market, tackling the high cost of business, especially energy and additional employment costs – and ensuring trade works for manufacturers. Do this and yet more companies will choose to build the next generation of vehicles here in Britain.”
He continued: “McLaren’s £500m investment and creation of 1,000 new jobs is a major boost to the UK and evidence of automotive’s ability to deliver skilled, high value jobs, economic growth and innovation.
“This commitment strengthens our position as a global leader in high-performance automotive design, engineering and advanced manufacturing, anchoring new products, skills and technologies in Britain.
“It further underlines the UK automotive sector’s strong fundamentals on which we must build with the right competitive conditions to deliver long-term growth.”
