Jaguar Land Rover will open its first factory in China tomorrow and is considering setting up in the US.

Another very important stage of the expansion of Jaguar Land Rover begins tomorrow. On Tuesday the 21st, its new manufacturing centre in the Chinese town of Changshu, northeast of Shanghai, starts production activity. These are its first large-scale production facilities outside the United Kingdom, and they are managed by the joint venture that Jaguar Land Rover set up 50/50 with the Chinese brand Chery about two years ago.

The Range Rover Evoque will initially be assembled at this centre. Later, although still without a specific date, the Discovery Sport will be added, as confirmed by Land Rover Programmes director Murray Dietsch. The new model, whose production has just started in Halewood, will reach China first, although these will be units imported from the United Kingdom.

The new Chinese centre has a manufacturing capacity of 130,000 vehicles per year and also includes an engine plant that will begin operating in 2015. The expansion of production facilities will not stop with JLR’s arrival in China; according to information obtained by the British newspaper The Sunday Times, it could continue in the United States.

The newspaper states that JLR is negotiating with the authorities of several southern states, including South Carolina, to invest in building a production centre capable of manufacturing around 200,000 cars per year. These facilities would allow JLR to avoid the tariffs levied on imports into that country and to mitigate the impact of currency fluctuations. For the moment, JLR has neither confirmed nor denied this information.

Source: Automotive News (China and US) and The Sunday Times