Britain’s biggest carmaker Jaguar Land Rover said a so-called “hard Brexit” would cost it 1.2 billion pounds ($1.59 billion) a year, curtailing its future operations in the United Kingdom.
“We urgently need greater certainty to continue to invest heavily in the UK and safeguard our suppliers, customers and 40,000 British-based employees,” JLR’s Chief Executive Ralf Speth said in a statement on Wednesday.
JLR joins a growing list of companies which have raised concerns about potential disruption to business if Britain crashes out of the bloc next March without a trading agreement with the European Union, a so-called hard Brexit, reports Reuters.
"The recent statement from JLR only reaffirms this position that a Brexit which increases bureaucracy, reduces productivity and competitiveness of the UK Industry is in no-one's interest," JLR's Indian parent firm Tata Motors Ltd said in a statement on Thursday.
Shares in Tata plunged to their lowest in more than five years on Thursday, as investors turned jittery on the company, whose biggest business is JLR, which contributed nearly 77 per cent of its total revenue in the year ended March 31, 2018.
JLR said it needed “free and frictionless trade with the EU and unrestricted access to the single market.
“A bad Brexit deal would cost Jaguar Land Rover more than 1.2 billion pounds in profit each year. As a result, we would have to drastically adjust our spending profile; we have spent around 50 billion pounds in the UK in the past five years - with plans for a further 80 billion pounds more in the next five,” Speth said in a statement.
“This would be in jeopardy should we be faced with the wrong outcome.”