The production facilities of the Jaguar Land Rover plant in Nitra. (source: SITA)
Jaguar Land Rover has suspended production at its Slovak plant in Nitra after a cyberattack forced the company to shut down key IT systems.
The carmaker said it had “taken immediate steps to mitigate the impact by proactively shutting down our systems” and was now “working on the controlled and safe restart of global applications”. It stressed that there was no evidence of customer data theft, but acknowledged that “our sales and manufacturing activities have been severely disrupted”.
Production at the €1.4bn Nitra site, which employs around 5,000 people, has been halted for several days. Three independent sources from inside the plant confirmed the stoppage to Slovak newspaper Hospodárske noviny, later backed up by company management. “The factory still has problems accessing some IT systems, which are affecting other processes in production,” one employee said.
The cyber incident was disclosed by JLR’s parent company, Tata Motors, to investors in Mumbai, coinciding with the planned unveiling of new models. At first it was unclear which sites had been affected, with early reports pointing to Britain. But Slovak sources said the outage of global systems had directly paralysed Nitra operations.
Employees in the UK, including at Halewood and Solihull, were told to stay at home because of IT failures, according to local media reports. In Nitra, staff were informed on Sunday, August 31, that the problems were continuing and production would remain suspended in the coming days.
Retail partners of JLR remain open, the company said on September 7. “We are working closely with external cybersecurity specialists and law enforcement agencies,” it added, as quoted by My Nitra.
The disruption comes as Slovakia’s car industry is already under pressure. The sector has reported three consecutive months of declining output, with both Economy Minister Denisa Saková and Alexander Matušek, head of the Automotive Industry Association, warning of wider impacts on production.
The Nitra factory, which produces the Land Rover Defender and Discovery, has been hit hard by recent US tariffs. Before they were introduced, one in four cars assembled there was destined for the American market.
