XPart, the official MG Rover spares operation owned by US group Caterpillar, will remain profitable despite the crash of the Longbridge carmaker, chairman John Parkinson said.

The near-£200 million a year business has been restructured since MGR went into administration in April and about 50 jobs have been lost.

But it will carry on providing a complete range of parts for the estimated three million Rover and MG cars on the road throughout the world for the foreseeable future, according to Mr Parkinson.

Speaking at XPart's base at Caterpillar Logistics at Desford, near Leicester, Mr Parkinson said the company could currently supply 95 per cent of MGR parts from stock.

One of the biggest problems XPart has faced in ensuring cars stay on the road has been ensuring a supply of replacement body panels.

This has been resolved with by a joint venture with Stadco, the automotive pressings specialist who will supply XPart from its factory at Coventry.

At the same time, tooling to which XPart has rights is being removed from Longbridge and transferred to new suppliers.

"It is clearly an understatement to say we have been through a challenging time," said Mr Parkinson.

"We have had to face a number of difficulties ranging from customers who believed that parts were no longer available to suppliers wanting to recoup business with outrageous price increases.

"The impact on the XPart business from the collapse of MG Rover has been significant.

"We have restructured and introduced a redundancy

programme. But we still have a profitable business to which we are commited in the longer term.

"We have a solid base on which we can build our new strategic plans," XPart's chairman added.

Even assuming a scrappage rate of Rover and MG cars of double the current rate more than a million would still be on the road in 2010.

"So there will still be a significant customer base five years out and we have no worries that the business is going to unravel," Mr Parkinson said.

XPart was formed when MG Rover clawed its parts business back from Unipart and was sold Caterpillar for about £100 million last year.

It currently has sales of $300 million (£172 million) a year - a level which Mr Parkinson expects to maintain with the help of some new ventures.

These include the All-Makes parts programme, covering all major carmakers and aimed at the independent motor trade, which signed up more than 40 distributors in its first 14 months of operations.

The company is also currently building up the XPart Autoservice Centre chain