Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover to resume production after cyberattack with $2B UK government support

Jaguar Land Rover announced on Monday that it will resume manufacturing cars in a ‘controlled and phased’ manner as it recovers from a cyber attack that forced the luxury carmaker to shut some of its factories in early September.

This comes shortly after the UK government extended a $2 billion loan guarantee to the Tata Motors-owned company to help offset the impact of the breach.

UK govt's aid to revive operations

The financial support was guaranteed by the UK Export Finance and provided by a commercial bank, which needs to be repaid over five years.

The loan guarantee aims to help support the supply chain and protect skilled jobs in the West Midlands, Merseyside, and throughout the UK, as the company employs 34,000 people in the country. A Bloomberg report earlier said that around 120,000 jobs in the UK are tied to the carmaker's supply chain.

The news agency reported that the cyberattack had a significant financial impact on the Tata Group, which lost more than $75 billion of market value this year. One cause was the JLR shutdown.

Status of the recovery process

On September 25, JLR said that some of its systems were back online, enabling it to work through a backlog of supplier invoices, accelerate parts distribution to dealers and speed up vehicle sales and registrations.

In the Monday statement, the carmaker said that some sections of its production operations will resume “in the coming days”, as it works to get all its systems back up and running.

Who was impacted by the cyberattack?

The cyberattack did not just affect JLR's UK production plants, but it also led to production halts at various plants across countries like Slovakia, Brazil and India. The breach also impacted some small suppliers who are reliant on it for business.

The resumption of operations will provide much-needed relief to these firms, as auto suppliers typically operate on thin margins and need high working capital. Bloomberg reported that such a disruption can eat into their margins and make it difficult for them to operate as usual.