The federal government is being urged to supply emergency financial support to guard Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) supply chain because the carmaker’s production stoppage looks set to proceed into next week following a significant cyber attack.
The UK’s biggest automobile manufacturer has told staff at its plants in Solihull, Halewood and Wolverhampton they may remain off work until at the least Wednesday, though they have to stay on standby because the situation is kept under review.
JLR was forced to shut down its production systems on 31 August after a cyber attack that disrupted its global operations.
David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham University, said the stoppage could have a serious ripple effect on the broader automotive sector and called for ministers to step in with emergency measures to support vulnerable suppliers.
“JLR is a really well-resourced company,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It made a profit of £3.5 billion within the yr as much as March, in order that they can get through this. My concern is in regards to the supply chain, and if it’s now continuing into next week, we may even see firms literally running out of cash.”
He warned that JLR had been producing around 1,000 cars a day – 700 within the UK – before the attack, generating £70m-75m a day in revenue and about £5m a day in profit.
“If it was, within the worst-case scenario, to hold on throughout September, that might mean successful to profits of about £150m, so this is huge for JLR,” Bailey said. “They’ll’t make cars; they’ll’t sell cars. Cars can’t be serviced. Every little thing has ground to a halt.”
Bailey estimated that as many as 250,000 people work in JLR’s supply chain. “If there’s a knock-on effect from this closure on to that offer chain, we could see corporations going under and jobs being lost, so some form of emergency loan support would must be checked out by way of keeping these corporations going,” he said.
“We’ve seen that before,” Bailey added. “We saw that in Covid. We saw it within the wake of the MG Rover collapse. That is something the federal government has got to start out occupied with.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham added the decision for presidency to defend jobs when industries are under attack.
“Many UK staff in small and medium automotive manufacturers are already facing insecurity due to low volume crisis within the sector. Hundreds of those staff within the JLR supply chain now find their jobs are under a right away threat due to cyber attack.
“Ministers must act fast and introduce a furlough scheme to make sure that vital jobs and skills should not lost while JLR and its supply chain get back on their feet.”
JLR said it was “working across the clock” to resume production, including bringing in third-party cyber security specialists and introducing workarounds to maintain some activity running.
The corporate has warned it believes “some data” was accessed within the hack, though it has not yet confirmed whether this involves customers or staff, and said it’s contacting anyone found to have been affected.
This Article First Appeared At www.am-online.com
