I was pleased to visit Ford’s Halewood Transmission Plant on Thursday for their announcement that they are increasing investment at the plant to scale up production of components for Ford’s European Electric Vehicle (EVE) range.

The plant will benefit from a £150 million increase in investment, raising the total investment to £380 million, to ensure that by 2026 Halewood will manufacture components for 70% of Ford’s EV sold in the Europe. It secures employment for over 500 people and increases annual production to 420,000 components a year. It is Ford’s first in-house investment in all-electric component manufacturing in Europe on the back of securing the plant’s long-term future earlier this year when it was chosen over Cologne to be at the centre of EV component production.

It is fantastic news for the area. I was pleased to meet Ford’s management to hear about how this safeguards Halewood’s place in their manufacturing structure and also be shown some of the new electric vehicles they will help to power.