Land Rover To Cut 1000 Jobs In 2003

FRANKFURT, Dec 13, 2002; Reuters reports that the Land Rover unit of Ford Motor Co said on Friday it planned to cut about 1,000 jobs at its U.K. Solihull manufacturing plant next year as it seeks further cost savings. The UK-based maker of offroad vehicles plans to avoid forced redundancies and will rely on natural wastage to reduce its workforce by about 12 percent at the plant near Birmingham in central Britain over the course of 2003, a company spokeswoman said. "We are constantly reviewing our business and trying to improve our efficiencies and this is part of that process," said the spokeswoman. The move follows about 500 white collar job losses earlier this year at Land Rover through voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes.

The spokeswoman declined to give a profit forecast for the unit as Ford does not break out earnings from individual brands.

The luxury brands of the world's second-biggest carmaker are under pressure to raise their profits almost ten-fold and to jointly account for a third of the parent company's earnings by the middle of the decade, up from an estimated $250 million now, a target analysts view as ambitious.

The brands, including Volvo, Jaguar and Aston Martin as well as Land Rover, come under the umbrella of the Premier Automotive Group.

Ford, itself in the midst of a multi-year turnaround plan after a $5.45 billion loss in 2001, has said it expects UK-based Jaguar to post an operating loss of about $500 million for 2002