Tata Motors’ Jaguar Land Rover is moving to larger facilities run by Wallenius Wilhelmsen at Brunswick in response to expanding demand, Transport Insights reports Jim Harington – the port operations and vehicle logistics manager of JLR – as saying. 

Panjiva data shows Jaguar Land Rover likely imported 30.1% of its U.S. imports through the port of Brunswick in the 12 months to Sept. 30. That was slightly behind Baltimore, which represented 38.8% of the total, while west coast shipments via Port Hueneme represented 25.8%.

Chart segments U.S.seaborne imports associated with Jaguar Land Rover by port of lading and unlading.  Source: Panjiva

Yet, the move comes as the firm faces a series of significant challenges. As outlined in Panjiva’s research of Oct. 22, U.S. sales of foreign vehicles dropped by 13.7% year over year in September and by 1.5% in the third quarter overall. 

Jaguar Land Rover’s imports to the U.S. are also sourced entirely from the U.K. As a result it faces both the uncertainties of Brexit – which remains in flux – as well as the risk of the imposition of section 232 tariffs on U.S. imports in the automotive sector from November.

The firm nonetheless has new growth to plan for, with Harington stating that “In 2020, we’re bringing the Defender model back to the US after a 20-year hiatus, so this move will accommodate processing of this heavily-accessorised model”.

U.S. seaborne imports associated with Jaguar Land Rover climbed 9.7% year over year in 3Q. However, that was likely down to imports associated with the Land Rover marque as imports associated with Jaguar specifically fell 2.2%. In turn that may be explained by a 3.7% slip in imports of the Jaguar F-Pace SUV, which was introduced in 2016.

Chart segments U.S.seaborne imports associated with Jaguar Land Rover by brand name.  Source: Panjiva