Jaguar Land Rover extends production halt until October after cyber attack

Wider supply chain under increasing pressure

Jaguar Land Rover will keep its production lines shut until 1 October 2025. Concerns are mounting for the company’s 33,000 staff and for the wider supply chain and impact on the West Midlands.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will keep its production lines shut until 1 October 2025, extending a suspension already in place following a damaging cyberattack that forced the luxury carmaker to halt operations earlier this month.

The company, owned by India's Tata Motors, first shut down production and sales on 31 August after discovering the hack, which compromised its IT systems and brought vehicle manufacturing to a standstill.

JLR operates three factories in Britain, producing around 1,000 cars a day, but since the shutdown it has been losing an estimated £50 million per week, according to the BBC.

In a statement, the carmaker said: "Today we have informed colleagues, suppliers and partners that we have extended the current pause in production until Wednesday 1 October 2025, following the cyber incident. We have made this decision to give clarity for the coming week as we build the timeline for the phased restart of our operations and continue our investigation."

The company stressed it was working with cybersecurity specialists, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and law enforcement agencies to bring its systems back online securely.

JLR said its priority remained "supporting our customers, suppliers, colleagues, and our retailers, who remain open."

JLR initially reassured staff and customers that no evidence of data loss had been found, but later confirmed that "some data" had in fact been accessed by hackers.

Supply chain pressure

The impact of the shutdown has already rippled far beyond JLR's own operations. The company employs around 33,000 staff, many of whom have been told to remain at home since the crisis began.

But it is the wider supply chain, a web of hundreds of businesses across the Midlands, that is under increasing pressure.

Experts warn that if production does not resume soon, the consequences could be severe. Professor David Bailey, an automotive industry specialist at Birmingham Business School, has estimated that a suspension lasting until November could cost the company the production of 50,000 vehicles, with profits hit by £120 million.

On Tuesday, Business Secretary Peter Kyle and Industry Minister Chris McDonald visited the West Midlands for the first time since the attack.

Meeting with JLR and local suppliers, the ministers sought to hear concerns directly from businesses.

"It's really important that we respond to what the business owners are telling us," McDonald told the BBC.

"It's really important that we don't impose solutions on businesses but that we work with them."

Union leaders and MPs have warned that thousands of workers in the supply chain could be left stranded without support.

Unite, Britain's largest union, has urged ministers to introduce a furlough-style scheme for those unable to work during the shutdown, after reports that some had been laid off or told to apply for universal credit.

Labour MP Antonia Bance, who represents Tipton and Wednesbury, warned of a looming "disintegration of the entire supply chain into JLR."

"When JLR stands back up again and is ready to go … it may be that some of the supply chain isn't ready to go, if they've lost the skilled labour that they rely on, or maybe some of the businesses have gone under," she said.

Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, for North Shropshire, urged the government to intervene.

"The car industry is so important to the West Midlands and indeed to the wider economy," she added.