Production of the Ineos Grenadier will be paused next week, and may not resume until next year due to issues with a supplier. Though the external company has not been named, they are said to be in a pre-insolvency situation while also being responsible for a piece of trim the car can’t be sold without. So the facility in Hambach will be temporarily halted.
The news comes from Ineos Automotive CEO Lynn Calder in an interview with Automotive News Europe. The supplier issue affects Grenadier and Quartermaster models. "I know that the [supplier] is working really hard to try and turn around their business and I want to give them every opportunity to do that”, she said.
Meanwhile, a search is underway for a secondary supplier of the part and Ineos’ expansion continues apace. The upcoming launches in Mexico and China will go ahead as planned despite the pause, taking the company to 50 markets globally. Presumably that’s with a reasonable degree of confidence that somebody else can make the required part.
“We will be leaving no stone unturned to try and get back online as fast as possible”, Calder added. While the aim is for the situation to be resolved before the end of this year, it could take until 2025 to get the production line up and running again. Obviously it’s hard to make hard and fast predictions about anything when dealing with the threat of insolvency.
Though there would never be a good time for this sort of thing to happen, it looks an especially unfortunate development for Ineos given H1 2024 sales were up 300 per cent on the same period last year. According to Calder, the brand is a couple of months from its 20,000th delivery, which it sounds like will still go ahead despite the supplier issue.
Not great news for those who were thinking about an order, then, though help is at hand from the PH classifieds - there are even Quartermasters available already. Additionally this Grenadier diesel looks smart in green (and sneaks in at less than £50k with what must be some demo miles), this Magic Mushroom Utility Wagon comes with an awning, and this Fieldmaster has been completely overhauled by the Chelsea Truck Company. So even with production temporarily on hold, there’s probably a Grenadier out there to suit every taste.
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