Jaguar Land Rover's latest expansion of its base in Birmingham has been welcomed by the city's planning chiefs as they awarded the project the green light.
The luxury car brand will add more than 360,000 sq ft of industrial and logistics space to its Jaguar base in Castle Bromwich on the site previously used by Dunlop Motorsport until its closed down there in 2014.
It has won unanimous backing today to build a warehouse unit of 183,800 sq ft for use as an integrated logistics centre and a second unit covering 180,890 sq ft for an automated storage and retrieval system.
The new buildings will receive and store parts and components which will then be transported within the existing plant to the production line.
Speaking at today's city council planning committee meeting, Coun Peter Douglas Osborn (Con Weoley) said: "I have huge admiration for JLR and what they have managed to achieve in putting the region in a position where it has a trade surplus with the Chinese Republic. This is a sensible use of the site."
Chief planning officer Richard Goulborn added: "It's very important to the city's economy. We will continue the work with JLR."
Some demolition work will be required and, as a result of the redevelopment, a net total of 225 car parking spaces will be lost.
The reduction of staff car parking is set to be mitigated by a proposed multi-storey car park on the former Showcase site in Kingsbury Road.
This is currently the subject of a separate application going through the planning process, to expand the car park from 1,122 to 2,776 spaces.
JLR also recently lodged plans for a temporary car park to house 'work in progress' cars awaiting final quality checks on the former Dunlop Motorsport factory site.
