Jaguar Land Rover gets �175m loan

Tata bought Jaguar Land Rover from Ford in 2008

Jaguar Land Rover has secured further funding worth £175m in the form of a loan from the State Bank of India, the carmaker has said.

The firm is struggling against falling sales during the downturn and has been looking at a number of refinancing packages in recent months.

The UK government had offered support but the Indian owner of Jaguar, Tata, said the terms were too "onerous".

The carmaker has now secured £500m of new funding this year.

It has come from a number of different sources, including Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Burdale Financial Limited - a subsidiary of the Bank of Ireland.

"We are pleased our funding plans are progressing and appreciate the confidence shown by our banking partners in our business," said Jaguar's chief finance officer Kenneth Gregor.

Big losses

Last month, the carmaker announced that it would close one of its West Midlands plants by the middle of the next decade - either the Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham or its factory in Solihull.

The closure is part of a cost-cutting exercise to make the carmaker more efficient.

It lost £280m in the 10 months to the end of March, during which sales fell by almost a third.

Tata bought Jaguar Land Rover for £1.7bn in June 2008 from Ford.

It currently employs 14,500 people, having made 450 redundancies at the start of the year.

The firm is based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and has a factory in Halewood, Merseyside, as well as the two in the West Midlands.