Trade & Invest Wales - Aston Martin Case Study. www.tradeandinvest.wales

Actual text:

I think with Wales, we’re creating another chapter in the Aston Martin story.

So we’ve always been a company that has built cars in England, so for us to come to

Wales – what’s really cool about it is that we maintain this ‘built in the UK’ but now we have this added dimension of 'hand-built in Wales'.

We looked around the world and we looked at them all from a quality, cost and delivery perspective.

But ultimately it’s not just about money, it’s about skills, it’s about supply chain, about the suppliers, about the availability of certain technologies that we use – and it’s about support.

What’s impressed us about the attitude of the Welsh Government towards us and towards business in general is that they’ve got a very can-do attitude.

The dialogue has been terrific.

Wales was kept in the race because the government, the Ministers, the system in Wales wanted this to happen.

Throughout, they’ve been absolutely terrific – very pro-business and very mindful of our need to stay on a schedule in order to launch a vehicle on time in 2019 which is super important for our business.

DBX is really about the future of our brand.

This will be the world’s most beautiful SUV and we always focus on proportion – that gives us the beauty that makes something timeless – all created here.

There will be a fingerprint of Wales, whether it’s the seamstresses or the guys actually assembling the car, so the unique touches will come from the craftsmanship that we gain from the people hand-building the car.

It’s really important to work with local universities, local industry – there is so much talent here in Wales.

Staying in touch, being part of the educational system and having those young apprentices, young designers come and feed Aston Martin as well, that’s really important.

It’s all about hand-built traditional skills which are, believe me, difficult to find but we could find them in Wales.