Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Rolls Royce

You can be a niche' vehicle manufacture AND enjoy success...

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced plans to create 200 jobs at its manufacturing plant and HQ in Goodwood, West Sussex. The new roles will bring the total workforce to over 2000 for the first time, a six-fold increase on the original total when the BMW-owned company first opened at Goodwood in 2003.

Yes it certainly is good news on the jobs

I suppose they aren’t worried about Brexit as their main and growing markets aren’t in Europe

It might even mean that more of their supply chain will be from the UK

The weak pound will be helping them big time.

Ah, but does it deano, most of the parts except the "pretty bits" are brought in from Euro Germany, but not withstanding that, it's all good news for British jobs and who cares who owns what.

Indeed, well done RR! As soon as any company issues shares that can be bought by any one, I don't think it makes sense to think of their nationality in terms of who owns them. Makes much more sense to think of it in terms of where the work is done.

Interesting to see that RR is only half the size of Bentley in terms of employees, I always assumed they were about the same.

I’ve often debated with others and myself about foreign ownership of UK manufacturing and I’ve come to conclusion that it’s better to have manufacturing and workforce in the UK than the corporation tax the government is missing out on

For a number of reasons

Jobs means PAYE tax revenues
Jobs means local economies thriving
Jobs means local supply chains
Jobs means training and knowledge
Whereas a wholly owned UK company doesn’t guarantee any profit or any income from corporation tax or any shareholder wealth

Just about all the large UK sited manufacturers owned abroad will make sure that the profit from everything they do here will go back to the country of domicile. usually in car manufacturing it’s through buying an expensive part or parts artificially inflated from that country

With Honda in the 80’s it was the gearbox which came from Japan

One of the governments major problems these days is the relative decline in company tax revenuse as companies are sold or domicile in cheap countries like Eire. The result under this government is tighter spending. Under Corby it will mean higher taxes on the middle classes - like you!

Yes ownership nationality matters a lot. Every time Nissan contemplate a new model they have to be bribed by the government to build here rather than elsewhere, and the same with every other car builder. The component manufacturing industry is decimated by foreign assemblers - over 60 % of the components used by the motor industry are now imported and it rioses every year. Thats a loss of jobs and profits and skills. The jobs created in the screwdriver assembly plants are lower skilled - Honda UK cars arent designed here for example. Management skills are weakened because of the senior foreign management involved. Corp[oration tax receipts go elsewhere. And finally there is no loyalty to the UK at all - no way would Renault move out of France but every single UK assembler could move out and likely will post brexit.

All theese are the reasons that the French have national champions. Our policy is to sell off everything

60% is a lot more that 10%.

Howards comments ring true.

Look at Amazon running competitive bids for the new 2HQ and the way the local governments have responded.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/as-amazon-narrows-choice-for-hq2these-cities-finishing-strong.html

JLR asked for bids for the new factory and Slovakia made the best bid.

At the end of the day governement (local and central) needs to drive employment and make their region productive. I feel the UK Gov. have had some moments or enlightenment but overall and no way involved enough for the long term. Honda and others have proven their capabilities many time in sustained productivity. We don't really give them enough praise because we are British. The British don't do that. I would love to have seen the British Gov. make JLR an offer that retained the business. Stupid and maybe impossible given Brexit etc but I live in a place where things should be done if possible.

Eire has done a good job historically of working with businesses to attract investment. I applaud the smart thinking behind this. They stuffed Dublin to the hilt with startups using EU grants. The result was hyper-inflation of house pricing and salaries! They then started to fill Cork. Apple has done very well with the Cork facility. It is friendly, focused and productive. I will not comment on the tax and legal position as I am not skilled to. From Corks point of view the area has definitely benefited in quality of life due to high employment. People are happy.

Re the imported parts I agree.
When I worked in Llanelli Radiators we made BL rads.
The Triumph Acclaim joint stopgap venture had 2 variants for 1.3 and 1.5 engine’s.
Kits of components came from Japan and we assembled them. Plastic tanks (yuck).
In typical Japanese thinking we got the exact numbers so if there were any scrapped we were short. It was always a battle to recoup them. Numbers were determined by car volumes so a similar tight numbers game across the board.