JLR employs more than 4,000 people at Halewood in Merseyside, assembling the Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport models. Tony McDonough reports

Potential disruption from a no-deal Brexit may be unavoidable, the boss of carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) said on Tuesday.

JLR employs more than 4,000 people at Halewood in Merseyside, assembling the Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport models, as well as thousands more and two factories in the West Midlands.

Chief executive Dr Ralf Speth has previously called a no-deal departure from the EU a “horrifying” prose that could cost the company £60m a day and wipe out its profits margins.

And at the Frankfurt Motor Show this week, Dr Speth was asked whether the company could mitigate the effects of no-deal by stockpiling the components its needs to assemble its vehicles. He replied this was not a solution to the problem.

Speaking at the launch of JLR’s new Land Rover Defender, he explained: “Stockpiling is only possible up to a certain degree. You have to know that we need 20 to 25m parts per day delivered on time at the assembly lines in order to produce a vehicle.

“And if you don’t have the one part, where ever from, we don’t produce the vehicles.”

JLR has struggled with global sales over the past year or so with a slowdown in key markets in China and in Europe.

However, in May, it said sales of the new generation Evoque, which started rolling off the Halewood production line earlier this year, had been “encouraging”. The company has invested £110m to bring the new model to the plant.