Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover has now become Britain’s largest automotive manufacturer, overtaking Japanese carmaker Nissan, as figures showed that British car manufacturing reached its highest level in a decade.

Jaguar Land Rover produced 489,923 cars in 2015 at its three British manufacturing plants at Solihull, Birmingham and Liverpool, 9 per cent more than in the year before. The company is expected to reach its target of over half a million cars this year, driven by a rollout of the XE, XF and Discovery Sport (launched in 2015) and the launch of the F-PACE

JLR’s rise came as manufacturing at Nissan’s UK operations fell by nearly 5 per cent to 476,589 cars. Nissan and JLR each produce more than the country’s third- and fourth-largest car manufacturers put together — MINI and Toyota together produce less than 400,000 cars.

Wolfgang Stadler, Executive Director of manufacturing at JLR, said that the acceleration in manufacturing had come despite a “challenging year for the industry against a backdrop of socio-economic instability.”

The figures highlight the transformation that has taken place at the company since 2009, when the carmaker produced 158,000 units that year.

Earlier this month, JLR announced it had sold 487,065 vehicles globally in 2015, led by the UK and Europe (in each of these markets sales were over 100,000), and growth in the US. However, Chinese sales were down 24 per cent, hit by market conditions, and the Tianjin chemical explosion in August, which destroyed or damaged 5,800 vehicles.

In 2015, UK car manufacturing topped just over 1.58 million, and exports a record 1.23 million.

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