Automotive giant Jaguar Land Rover shuts down production at its Liverpool city region factory amid a global cyber attack as it battles to get its systems back online. Tony McDonough reports
Carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says it is “working at pace” to get its operations back up and running after being hit by a major cyber attack.
Workers in its 3,500-strong workforce at Halewood in Merseyside were told not to come into work on Monday as the company was forced to halt production at multiple sites. The disruption has continued into Tuesday.
In a statement the company said: “JLR has been impacted by a cyber incident. We took immediate action to mitigate its impact by proactively shutting down our systems. We are now working at pace to restart our global applications in a controlled manner.
“At this stage there is no evidence any customer data has been stolen but our retail and production activities have been severely disrupted.”
Auto dealers told the Autocar outlet that they had been unable to register new vehicles on September 1, one of the busiest days of the year for new car registrations.
JLR’s parent company Tata confirmed the incident in a filing to the Indian stock exchange, referring to it as an “IT security incidence”.
Halewood staff were told: “The leadership team has agreed that production associates will be stood down and will have hours banked in line with the corridor agreement.”
It added that some people with specific skills would still be required to show up for work. They include all salaried, maintenance and staff working in the factory’s tool room.
It has been a troubled year for JLR. In August LBN revealed the wrangle over tariffs in the US had hit quarterly revenues and profits in the three months to June 30.
JLR’s revenues for the quarter were £6.6bn, down 9.2% on the same period in 2024 and 4% lower than the previous quarter this year. Pre-tax profit in the quarter was £351m, down from £693m a year ago.
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In April the company paused shipments to the US following the introduction of 27.5% import tariffs by President Donald Trump. It breathed a sigh of relief in May when the UK and US Governments agreed a deal that would see tariffs on car imports into the US reduced to 10% for the first 100,000 vehicles each year.
However, the agreement came too late for JLR to avoid taking a hit to its sales. A planned wind-down of egacy Jaguar vehicles ahead of the launch of new Jaguar and the switch to electric also impacted sales.