Jaguar Land Rover has restarted Range Rover production lines in Solihull, with plans for all its manufacturing sites to be back up and running by the end of next week as it recovers from a major cyber attack.
The carmaker said employees went back to work at the Solihull site in the West Midlands in the UK today, following the phased restart of production yesterday after being suspended for more than a month due to the hack.
It said the remaining production lines in Solihull, which make the Range Rover Velar SUV and Jaguar F Pace models, will come back on stream next Monday, alongside vehicle manufacturing operations in Halewood, Merseyside.
Overseas factories in Pune, India, and Brazil are set to follow suit later next week, marking the final sites to resume operations, according to the group.
JLR global manufacturing director Luis Vara said there was a "strong sense of unity and momentum" among production workers, who were told to work from home after the firm's systems were hacked on August 31.
The cyber attack came at a crucial time for car firms, with September the month when the latest registration plates are released, traditionally boosting demand for new motors.
The incident also caused significant disruption to the firm's global operations, with suppliers being left in limbo as production froze.
On Monday, JLR revealed a sharp drop in sales over recent months following the cyber incident, adding it had been a "challenging quarter" as it also grappled with the impact of higher US tariffs.
Sales fell by 17.1% to 85,495 units between July and September, compared with the same period a year ago, with UK sales dropping by nearly a third.
The volume of wholesales tumbled by 24.2% year on year to 66,165 units.
JLR said this partly reflected the production freeze since the start of September.
The group's production restart began with its engine plant in Wolverhampton and its battery assembly centre in Coleshill, Birmingham, yesterday.
It also restarted stamping operations in Castle Bromwich, Halewood in Merseyside, and Solihull, yesterday, together with key areas of its Solihull vehicle production plant, such as its body shop, paint shop and its logistics operations centre.
This was followed by operations at its vehicle manufacturing facility in Nitra, Slovakia.
Mr Vara said: "There is a strong sense of unity and momentum as we get back to doing what we do best, building quality luxury vehicles for our customers."
The firm 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.
The UK government recently announced it would underwrite a £1.5 billion loan guarantee to JLR to give suppliers some certainty over payments, helping bolster JLR's cash reserves, but calls mounted for more to be done.
JLR said on Tuesday that its extended support package would see suppliers paid much faster than under the usual payment terms, by as much as 120 days early.
It will start with qualifying JLR suppliers seen as critical to the restart of production, then will be expanded to cover some non-production suppliers who have also been affected.
JLR also vowed to pay back financing costs for those JLR suppliers who use the scheme during the restart phase.
A raft of other businesses have been hit by major cyber attacks in recent months, including Japanese beer giant Asahi, high street retailer Marks & Spencer and nursery group Kido Schools
