Earlier this year, Aston Martin announced significant new investments in its long-term future in the United Kingdom, choosing St Athan in Wales as the location for its second manufacturing facility.
As a specialist luxury manufacturer, Aston Martin requires highly skilled technicians to hand build its cars, so the new employees for the St Athan plant, which will begin full production in 2020, will commence their careers with Aston Martin at Gaydon. Over 40 people have begun work across the business where they are being fully trained in the ‘Aston Martin way’ by building the new DB11.
Dr. Andy Palmer CMG, Aston Martin President and CEO said: “We are proud of the fact that we have a world-class team building our cars so it is vital that the new Welsh workforce is equally dedicated and passionate. It gives me great satisfaction to be able to employ a workforce that is local to the St Athan plant and bring them here to Gaydon to train them to become the skilled technicians required to build our beautiful hand-crafted cars. We have continued to work closely with the Welsh Government throughout the recruitment process and we are very pleased with the calibre of our new employees.”
A recruitment event held in Cardiff in the Spring attracted over 3,000 applicants for the jobs being created at St Athan, from apprentices at the start of their careers to already highly-skilled workers.
First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones said:
We are delighted that Aston Martin chose Wales for its second manufacturing facility and it is a pleasure to see the first group of Welsh employees starting out in their new careers with Aston Martin. The new plant will transform the Ministry of Defence site at St Athan with the economic benefits estimated at half a billion pounds over 30 years.
Construction work is scheduled to start at St Athan in 2017, centering on the transformation of three super-hangers at MOD St Athan.
St Athan will be the sole production facility for a new Aston Martin crossover vehicle. A concept crossover vehicle named ‘DBX’ was first shown in early 2015 and showed the company’s intention and direction for this fast-growing segment of the luxury market. With growing demand for these types of vehicles in markets such as China and the United States, it is expected that over 90% of the production from St Athan will be exported outside of the United Kingdom.
Aston Martin will commence production in the autumn at Gaydon of the new DB11, the replacement for the iconic DB9 and the first car to be launched under the company’s Second Century plan. Over the course of the next five years, the company will both replace and expand its entire sports car portfolio. Starting with DB11, sports car manufacturing will be centered at Gaydon with the facility progressively expanding production to a planned maximum volume of 7,000 sports cars a year by 2020.