The luxury carmaker, owned by India's Tata Motors, picked Slovakia last year as the location for the new factory which will have an annual output of up to 300,000 vehicles and is one of the country's biggest foreign direct investments.

The company, which is rapidly boosting its model line-up and production volumes to reach 1 million units by the end of the decade, is already building the new Discovery at its plant in Solihull in central England.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by David Clarke)