London (AFP) – Jaguar Land Rover on Monday said it will partially restart production in the coming days after a damaging cyberattack halted operations at its UK factories. The Indian-owned automaker stated on September 2 that it had been targeted by hackers, severely disrupting sales and production and forcing the company to seek emergency funding.
“As the controlled, phased restart of our operations continues, we are taking further steps towards our recovery,” JLR said in a statement. “Some sections of our manufacturing operations will resume in the coming days,” it added. The UK government at the weekend agreed to a loan guarantee worth £1.5 billion ($2 billion) to help shore up the firm’s cash reserves and supply chain. A government credit agency will guarantee a commercial bank loan, to be repaid over five years by JLR.
IT systems at the company owned by India’s Tata Motors partly came back online last week as part of a phased restart. The partial systems restart helped to clear a backlog of payments to its suppliers, after unions warned that some were at risk of collapse owing to the disruption. As part of its investigation, JLR believes that “some data” was accessed by the hackers, but has provided no further details.
JLR operates the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, employing around 120,000 people. It employs 34,000 people directly in its UK operations, with factories in England’s West Midlands and northwest. The government recently warned of “significant impact” from the cyberattack following an emergency meeting with UK car trade body SMMT. According to the BBC, JLR is losing at least £50 million per week in lost production.
Cyber gangs have increasingly targeted UK luxury brands and retailers, including Britain’s Marks and Spencer, Harrods, and the Co-op food chain. British police in July arrested four people suspected of involvement in attacks against the three retailers, which saw hackers demand ransom payments after breaking into their IT systems. Such cyberattacks have cost companies hundreds of millions of pounds in lost sales. Marks and Spencer, whose online services were crippled for weeks, took a £300-million hit to annual operating profit, while the Co-op on Thursday said the incident impacted its first-half operating profit by £80 million and revenue by £206 million.
The cyberattack is the latest setback for JLR, which reported a sharp reduction in sales after it halted exports of its cars to the United States in April in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. A trade agreement between London and Washington reduced the tariff on UK car exports to 10 percent from 27.5 percent, on a limit of 100,000 vehicles annually. But the luxury car and SUV maker said it still planned to cut up to 500 UK management jobs.
© 2024 AFP
