Jaguar Castle Bromwich Plant Factory Footage

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• published: 30 Oct 2010
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PLANT INFORMATION Plant Name:Castle Bromwich Manufacturing Facility City:Castle Vale State:Birmingham, B35 7RA Country:UK EMPLOYMENT Current Total Employment:approx 2000 Hourly: Salaried PRODUCTION HISTORY Current Products:XJ, XK, XF Year Opened:1980 Site Size in Acres:93 Site Size in Square Feet:1.4 mill Product History: . 1938: May: Lord Nuffield, the maker of Morris cars, agrees with Air Minister Sir Kingsley Wood to build a factory at Castle Bromwich to mass-produce Spitfire aircraft. 15 July: Start of construction. 1940: May: The new Minister for Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook takes over the factory from the Nuffield Organization and puts Vickers Armstrong in charge. June: The first Spitfire is delivered and test-flown by Alex Henshaw. 1943: May: The 5000th Spitfire is produced. October: Castle Bromwich delivers its first Lancaster bomber. 1945: December: Aircraft production ceases after 11,780 Spitfires and 305 Lancasters have been made. 1946: 31 March: The aircraft factory is officially closed. 1946-47: The Castle Bromwich factory is taken over by the Birmingham company Fisher & Ludlow (itself founded in 1849) for making all-steel bodies for cars, mostly for Standard and Morris. They also make Bendix washing machines. 1953: Fisher & Ludlow is taken over by BMC (British Motor Corporation), a company formed by the merger of Austin and Morris. Castle Bromwich now mostly produces bodies for the Austin factory at Longbridge. 1954-61: Castle Bromwich makes the bodies for the Austin-engined Nash Metropolitan sold in the USA. Among other products is the Austin Champ military vehicle. 1965: BMC takes over the Pressed Steel Company at Cowley, Jaguar's body supplier. PSC is later merged with Fisher & Ludlow to become Pressed Steel Fisher. 1966: BMC merges with Jaguar, and the company becomes BMH (British Motor Holdings). 1968: BMH merges with Leyland and becomes British Leyland. From now on, Castle Bromwich increasingly supplies car bodies to other BL factories across the Midlands, including Rover, Triumph and Jaguar, as well as Mini bodies for Longbridge. 1975: Castle Bromwich supplies the bodies for the new Jaguar XJ-S. 1980: 28 July: Jaguar takes full control of body assembly and paint operations at Castle Bromwich which becomes a dedicated Jaguar plant. 1984: Jaguar, including the Castle Bromwich factory, is privatized from British Leyland. 1998-99: Introduction of the S-type, the first Jaguar car to be fully assembled at Castle Bromwich. 2005: 1 July: Car assembly at Jaguar's Browns Lane factory in Coventry comes to an end, and production of the XJ model is transferred to Castle Bromwich. December: Start of production of the new XK. 2007: November: The new XF goes into production at Castle Bromwich.