A new £45m stamping line, the first of its kind in the UK, has been installed at JLR Halewood.
The servo press line at Halewood, where Jaguar Land Rover manufactures its Freelander2 model, the Range Rover Evoque and plans to produce a new “Baby Discovery”, is 13 metres tall and over 85 metres long.
Halewood Press Shop – Facts & Figures
- Halewood’s press shop is one of the largest stamping floors in the UK, covering a 30,000m2 area.
- The press shop includes 10 fully automated press lines, with tonnage capacity from 600 to 1000 tonnes, stamping both steel and aluminium parts.
- Around 700 panels are produced every hour, 25 million every year.
- 18 million hits – steel stamped per year, plus almost 1 million aluminium hits.
- 60% of Halewood stamping production is for Halewood with the remainder going to Castle Bromwich and Solihull for other vehicles in the Jaguar Land Rover line-up.
- 80% of Jaguar Land Rover total stamping volume is produced at Halewood.
- 234 Die sets (the mould for the panels).
- The Press shop operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week on a four-shift system.
It has a combined press stamping capacity of 7,900 tonnes, making it the fastest and one of the biggest and most powerful press lines across Jaguar Land Rover, stamping both steel and aluminium panels.
The new line necessitated a major reconfiguration of the Halewood press shop including a project to raise the roof of the facility by almost 12 metres and a 50% increase in footprint.
Commenting on the significance of the “colossal” new press line Richard Else, operations director for JLR Halewood, said it was a sign of his organisation’s long term commitment to the UK as a manufacturing location.
“Halewood is one of the most flexible, advanced automotive manufacturing facilities in Europe, producing two of the highest quality, largest selling Jaguar Land Rover vehicles to over 170 countries world-wide,” he continued.
“This investment ensures we can make more panels, even more efficiently and will continue to do so for many years to come.”
A few final tweaks to the line will be carried out by the press technology provider Aida at the end of March in preparation for a series of trial pressings in April.
The facility will become operational over the summer time and will ramp up to full production in the autumn.
The line is capable of making 20 strikes a minute and the panels it produces will be used across JLR’s UK sites.
The new servo press technology is distinctly different from the more mechanical operations previously used by JLR.
It can handle higher tonnages, work at higher speeds and is more energy efficient.
The design of the Aida press also allows for faster die changes – changes can be achieved in under five minutes, compared to up to 55 minutes for the largest existing mechanical Halewood press line – bringing big benefits in flexibility.
