Britain’s biggest car maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will reportedly restart some of its production lines on Monday as it looks to recover from the major cyber attack that’s downed the business’ operations for more than a month.
According to the BBC, manufacturing processes will resume today at JLR’s engine factory in Wolverhampton, some five weeks after its global workforce was told to down tools.
Vehicle outputs at its car plants in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull, West Midlands, are due to recommence later in the week, though exact timing has yet to be confirmed.
However, outputs are likely to remain limited for several weeks, with full production capacity not expected immediately.
It comes after the group said some sections of its manufacturing operations would commence amid a ‘controlled, phased restart of our operations’.
JLR paused all manufacturing on the morning of 1 September after being targeted by hackers.
The restarting of outputs come as experts have warned the extended production shutdown could hit the group’s bottom line by around £120million, with the firm usually thought to build about 1,000 cars a day.
Manufacturing processes will resume today at JLR’s engine factory in Wolverhampton, it has been reported
More than 30,000 staff working across JLR’s UK production sites – which usually make about 1,000 cars a day – have downed tools in the West Midlands and on Merseyside for over a month following the ‘cyber incident’
The British car firm, which has been paralysed since the security breach by hackers on Sunday 31 August, said last week that it had ‘informed colleagues, retailers and suppliers that some sections of our manufacturing operations will resume in the coming days‘.
Daily Mail has contacted JLR for comment.
The ‘cyber incident’ – which is unprecedented for the automotive sector – has meant that JLR has been unable to produce a single model in the month of September across its vehicle plants in the UK, Slovakia, Brazil and India.
The pause has also left its suppliers in limbo leading to calls for urgent financial support, with the Government announcing it would underwrite a £1.5billion loan guarantee to JLR to give suppliers some certainty over payments.
The loan, from a commercial bank, will help to bolster JLR’s cash reserves as it pays back companies in its supply chain, who have been majorly impacted by the shutdown.
The cyber attack – which is unprecedented for the automotive sector – has meant that JLR failed to produce a single model in the month of September
The British car firm, which has been paralysed since the security breach by hackers on Sunday 31 August, last week said it had informed ‘colleagues, retailers and suppliers that some sections of our manufacturing operations will resume in the coming days’
Unions and politicians have raised fears that small suppliers producing parts for the car giant could collapse without financial support.
JLR has the largest supply chain in the UK automotive sector, which employs around 120,000 people and is largely made up of small and medium-sized businesses.
In the aftermath of the attack on 31 August, ministers have been in contact daily with JLR and cyber experts, as the company seeks to restart production.
Downing Street said it had been ‘a concerning time for workers at Jaguar Land Rover and, of course, across the supply chain’.
And JLR isn’t the only car maker left reeling from a cyber attack.
Renault has recently confirmed it has been caught up in a similar hack, which impacts UK customers.
Renault Group UK has emailed drivers in Britain to confirm that a third-party data processing business used by the car firm was targeted by hackers.
As a result, ‘some customers’ personal data has been taken from one of their systems,’ Renault said.
It has been reported that some owners and customers of Dacia vehicles, which are also made by Renault, have also been affected.
The company stressed that no financial data, such as bank account details, or password data was compromised in the attack.
But it said data accessed in the hack included some or all of: customer names, addresses, dates of birth, gender, phone number, vehicle identification numbers and vehicle registration details.
JLR’s car plants in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull in the West Midlands (pictured) are expected to restart production this week
JLR, which is owned by the Indian Tata conglomerate, has stated that it had found no evidence that any customer data had been stolen after it shut down its systems to mitigate impact of the breach.
However, on 11 September it confirmed that a review alongside cyber security experts had identified that ‘some data has been affected’.
Cyber groups known as Scattered Spider and Shiny Hunters have claimed responsibility for the hack, saying they exploited an apparent glitch in the company’s IT systems. They also boasted of gaining access to customer data.
The two organisations, believed to largely comprise teenagers and young men in English-speaking nations, now describe themselves as ‘one and the same’ – while rebranding themselves as ‘Scattered Lapsus Hunters’.
David Bailey, professor of business economics at the Birmingham Business School, told the PA news agency that the month-long pause on JLR operations is likely to significantly dent profits and comes at a challenging period for the company.
‘The value of cars usually made at the sites means that around £1.7billion worth of vehicles will not have been produced, and I’d estimate that would have an initial impact of around £120 million on profits,’ he said.
‘Some of that might be recovered when production restarts but the longer this goes on, the more of a concern this will be.
‘If reports are right that this could last until November, then that could mean around 50,000 cars not being produced.’
