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Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will begin operations of its Completely Knocked Down (CKD) vehicles from the Ranipet plant in Tamil Nadu from early 2026.

The company locally manufactures Range Rover and Range Rover Sport in India

“We will start with CKD operations for JLR from early next year. Today, we have all our CKD operations in Pune, and over time, we will migrate them to the Tamil Nadu plant. The facility is also a Tata Motors plant, and we will require manufacturing capacity. All options will be discussed and the best way forward for the Chennai plant. The plant will get industrialised before 203,2 and we have time available before we can get it fully tipped up,” said PB Balaji, group CFO, Tata Motors in a media roundtable in Mumbai.

In September 2024, Tata Motors broke ground for a new vehicle manufacturing facility at Panapakkam in Ranipet District, Tamil Nadu. The facility is expected to have an annual production capacity exceeding 2.5 lakh units, with production ramping up in phases to achieve this target over the next 5 to 7 years. Tata Motors has committed an investment of Rs.9,000 crore for the project, which will be implemented over several years.

Further, JLR recently slashed its Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) margins for FY26 to 5- 7 per cent, on risks arising from US tariffs, transition to battery electric vehicles and a cloudy outlook for the Chinese market. The company had earlier forecasted an EBIT margin of 10 per cent. The company has stated it will increase its market activation and reroute demand to other parts of the world.

“There are two possible impacts on the situation in the USA. One is on the demand side, and the other is on the cost side. As far as the demand side is concerned, what we intend to dial up would be our market activation, so that the strength of the brand, Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and the Defender, with that, we should be able to mitigate some aspect of the demand stress that could be there. And also reroute some of the demand to other parts of the world, where we believe, for example UK is coming back for us, Europe we believe is in a stable zone at this point,” he said.

“The current tariffs are still present. Even on the UK side, while the notification has come through, we would expect to get it operationalised in the next 7 days. Until such time, there is a cost hit coming in. EU to US, where our Slovakia plant is, there is something still under the tariff at this point, and therefore, we will have a cost impact for that,” added PB Balaji.

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Published on June 24, 2025