Aston Martin's St Athan plant to boost manufacturing efficiency

Entering the world's fastest growing segment, the DBX has massive potential to expand Aston Martin's sales and enable it to tap into new markets. It will be the first of Aston Martin’s seven planned new models, which are being developed to build on the British firm's recent sales success that hit a nine-year high in 2017.

As such, the St Athan site will play a significant role in growing Aston Martin production numbers. It will also be a key location in developing Aston Martin's electric and hybrid models, the first of which, the Rapide E, is also due in 2019.

Read more: Production Aston Martin DBX previewed in new image

St Athan will employ 700 workers, who were selected from 3000 applicants at a recruitment event in 2016. The existing workforce at St Athan is set to double in size from early-2019, when the newly-commissioned production line will begin to roll out prototypes of the DBX SUV. 

Seventy Welsh employees, having spent two and a half years in training at Aston Martin’s existing facility in Gaydon, will be charged with educating all new employees as production of the company’s new model ramps up. The full workforce is scheduled to be employed by early-2020 as the DBX nears completion. 

Aston CEO Andy Palmer previously said that there will be some overlap between activities at the company's sites: "If we’re already making components in Gaydon that are needed in St Athan there seems little point tooling up all over again. Likewise, work done in St Athan, particularly in areas such as electrification, will clearly have its applications in Gaydon.

"But, in principle, I like the idea of having two competing plants, particularly as one is in England and the other in Wales. It promotes healthy competition and each will drag the other up."

In August 2017 Aston Martin hired ex-Maserati and Ferrari engine boss Joerg Ross to be its new chief engineer for powertrains - a move which came as part of its push towards electrification.

"We will have an engineering centre [at St Athan], it is also likely to be where we do the bulk of our electrification work," said Palmer following Ross's arrival. "Also, we will have our cyber security department here. All the talk these days is of autonomous drive but very few people are talking about how to make sure these cars cannot be hacked, and in many ways that’s a more difficult challenge than autonomy. But until the cars are secure, they cannot be autonomous."

Another 250 jobs are being created at Gaydon. Aston claims that 1000 jobs in total will be created from its current expansion plan.