While celebrating its centenary year, Ford of Britain is also recognising 80 years of production at Ford Dagenham, its largest UK facility. The Dagenham plant took 28 months to build and 80 years on it remains one of the country’s key automotive manufacturing centres.
Today, Dagenham is home to an engine plant, a stamping plant and tool room, a powertrain engineering team and a substantial transport operation. Some 4,500 people work on the Dagenham Estate, making it London’s largest industrial employer.
Nearly 11 million vehicles and more than 38 million engines have been built at what is now a 475-acre site. Dagenham’s future has been safeguarded by Ford’s commitment of a £1.5 billion investment in affordable, low CO2 technologies over the next five years at its four UK engineering and manufacturing facilities.
Dagenham’s central role in diesel engine production was reinforced by the opening the Dagenham Diesel Centre (DDC) in 2003. The main plant and the DDC collectively produce four engine types, used in more than 25 vehicle derivatives. Ford Dagenham is now producing close to 1,000,000 diesel engines annually for vehicles built all over the world.
Dagenham facts
- A new engine is produced every 24 seconds in the DDC.
- There are 10 miles of railway tracks across the Dagenham estate.
- The estate covers 475 acres, up from its initial size of 295 acres when it opened.
- If you travel on the Eurostar from London, part of your journey will be through the Dagenham estate.
- If the 10,980,368 cars, trucks and tractors built at Dagenham were parked end-to-end, they would circle the world 10 times over.
