More UK investment as Mini flowers in Holland

Announcing a £250 million investment to be shared between Oxford, where the Mini is assembled, at Hams Hill, where it builds engines and at the Swindon body pressing plant, BMW also said that it was likely that some additional Mini manufacturing would take place in Holland. "We have ambitious plans for the growth of Mini and we can't build all the cars we need to at Oxford so we need to look at a flexible partner to build the cars that we need and we're considering a contract with a Dutch contract manufacturer," a spokesman told the BBC. In an official statement, the company said the investment would support its international growth strategy for the brand with increasing volumes and up to 10 different models in a new line-up of models. It comes on top of the £500m UK investment announced in June 2011 and "means additional job security for the 5500 UK associates working in the UK Mini production network". "A year ago we announced a further investment of £500m in our UK production network by 2014 and today we are announcing an additional £250m, taking us through to 2015. This brings our total investment in the UK since 2000 to £1.75 billion," said BMW board member Harald Krueger (pictured). The additional investment was great news for UK employees and showed BMW's commitment to Britain as a vital manufacturing base, he added. The extra volume for the growth strategy and the complexity of new model lines meant that additional production capacity beyond Oxford's maximum capacity was needed in the medium term. In Holland, Krueger said, "Oxford will provide special Mini production expertise for any new operation, particularly in dealing with the high complexity and customer individuality which Mini demands and in operating state-of-the-art, multi-model production lines. Just as Munich is the centre of the BMW world, Oxford is and will remain the home and the heart of MINI."