Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has announced an investment exceeding £300 million to extend its manufacturing facility at Goodwood, described as “the next step in the company’s commitment to creating value for clients by handcrafting the most complex, personal, and valuable luxury goods while providing an unparalleled client experience”. The marque’s 2024 performance – a record year for Bespoke and the third-best sales result in the company’s history – confirms the success of this approach.
The extension will create additional space for the increasingly complex and high-value bespoke and coachbuild projects sought by customers who define luxury as something deeply personal to them. It will also ready the manufacturing facility for the marque’s transition to a battery electric vehicle (BEV) future.
This investment of over £300 million is the single largest injection of capital since the plant opened on 1 January 2003. Then, it employed around 300 people and produced just one motor car a day. Although the Goodwood manufacturing plant has undergone significant internal changes over the past 20 years, the building itself has remained largely unchanged, while staff numbers have since increased more than eight-fold, and the marque now produces up to 28 motor cars a day.
More than 2,500 people are now employed at the Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood – including many highly skilled manufacturing and craft specialists – as well as around 7,500 in the company’s wider UK supply chain. In 2023, an independent study by the London School of Economics (LSE) demonstrated that Rolls-Royce Motor Cars contributes around half a billion pounds to the UK economy every year, as a leading representative of ‘UK PLC’.
Planning permission to extend the Home of Rolls-Royce was granted in 2024. Fittingly, this milestone was achieved during the year in which Rolls-Royce celebrated the 120th anniversary of the first meeting between its co-founders, Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce, on 4 May 1904. Site preparation and landscaping work is now underway.
Chris Brownridge, chief executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, said: “In 2024, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars reaffirmed its position as an authentic luxury house by crafting the most complex, personal, and valuable motor cars in its history. This momentum means it is necessary for us to invest more than £300 million in extending the Home of Rolls-Royce. This represents our most substantial financial commitment to Goodwood since its opening in 2003 and a significant vote of confidence in the Rolls-Royce marque, securing our future here in the UK.”
He concluded: “2024’s record bespoke results demonstrate our clients are increasingly drawn to the marque to create ever more ambitious and valuable motor cars, thereby enjoying the exceptional and highly personalised experience that Rolls-Royce ownership unlocks. This underscores our commitment to creating value for our clients and those with a stake in our business.”