Jaguar Land Rover cars could be assembled in Saudi Arabia

Tata Motors is playing with the idea of building a manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province to assemble it's Jaguar and Land Rover cars, lured by the avaiablibity of cheap aluminum in the region. 

The said manufacturing facility, Jaguar Land Rover Ltd could be built next to a new aluminum smelter. An aluminium mega project worth 4 billion U.S dollars is currently being built in Ras-Al-Khair, north of Jubail. The combined aluminium refinery and smelter will have an annual capacity of 740,000 tons of aluminium, and is expected to the produce the cheapest aluminium in the world.

The smelter is a joint venture between Saudi Arabian Mining Co (Maaden) and Alcoa Inc and is scheduled to start production in 2013.

"This smelter could make the production of aluminum in Saudi Arabia very competitive. So taking a really long-term view, if we put an assembly plant there with a large press shop, given our commitment to aluminum in our products, we could have an interesting business case which we are examining today," Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata said.

Source - AutoCar India