Rolls-Royce chief executive Warren East has confirmed the company will keep its operations in the UK under any Brexit scenario.

“At Rolls-Royce, we’re committed to the UK. We are spending a fortune on capital expenditure in Derby and we are not going to move from there,” he said.

It has spent almost £100 million preparing for a no-deal Brexit, but has warned a large number of jobs could be lost in the UK if Britain crashed out of the EU. Rolls-Royce employs 23,400 people in the UK.

“We’ve spent £100 million on preparations, such as stockpiling and logistics, and we are not a ‘just in time’ business which depends on supplies so we have a bit of a buffer,” Mr East said.

“But we cannot guarantee everything; we have thousands of suppliers and we have talked to all of them about contingency planning. When you screw together 5,000 parts to make an engine you have a problem if you have 4,999 of those parts, but one missing because a supplier has no contingency plan.”

Rolls-Royce’s profit for the first six months of the year rose to £94 million, from £81 million a year earlier. Revenue increased by 7% to £7.4 billion.

Mr East added: “Uncertainty isn’t very good for business and I think you can see that in the stock market, the currency and those sorts of indicators.

“We are in a much better position, fortunately, than many other companies. I don’t think many people in Rolls-Royce are going to lose their jobs as a result of Brexit directly, [but] at a lot of other companies that’s what people are looking at.”

Rolls-Royce

www.rolls-royce.com

Michael Tyrrell Author Michael Tyrrell Digital Coordinator

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