Nissan and North East suppliers create seats for Royal…

Nissan and North East suppliers create seats for Royal Navy submarine

Seats used in two of Nissan's newly electrified cars will also find a home aboard one of the Royal Navy's newest nuclear submarines.

The manufacturer's Sunderland plant has worked with nearby tier one suppliers Lear and Adient to supply the Ministry of Defence with the seats, which are found in the Juke Hybrid and Qashqai e-POWER models. HMS Anson's submarine commander and senior engineer will use the seats, which have been designed to reduce fatigue encourage the NASA-measured neutral posture.

Keith Chambers, production control director at Nissan Sunderland, said: "We are extremely proud to provide two of our specially designed Zero Gravity car seats for the Royal Navy’s new submarine HMS Anson. The seats are from our newly electrified Juke Hybrid and Qashqai e-POWER models.

"It’s fantastic to team up with Sunderland City Council and two of our long-term local suppliers to add a flavour of our region’s automotive manufacturing excellence to the development of this state of the art submarine."

Adient, which operates a base next to Nissan's Sunderland plant, produces about 100,000 seats sets every year. Mick Flanagan, vice president customer group at Adient, said: "It’s a privilege to be able to gift seats for this remarkable submarine. At Adient we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of industry trends and technologies and the technology in this vessel is truly cutting edge."

Lear operates part of its seating division from Houghton-le-Spring. Gideon Jewel, president of seating Europe, Africa & Middle East at Lear, said: "Lear always aim to offer support to the communities in which we do business. Lear Sunderland is a high performing operation with a strong and diverse team supporting Nissan.

"We are delighted to have had the chance to provide seating for a submarine of this calibre that like Lear has a strong affiliation with the city."

HMS Anson is one of seven Astute class submarines, which are thought of as the most technologically advanced attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy. The vessel is armed with Tomahawk land attack missiles and Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes. It's onboard nuclear reactor does not need to be refuelled during its 25-year service period.

The project has also been supported by the business investment team at Sunderland City Council. Coun Graeme Miller, leader of Sunderland City Council, said: "As a city that built ships for the world and now builds cars on a global scale, it’s great to see Sunderland’s past and present specialities combine on this amazing piece of engineering. We are very proud of our affiliation with this state of the art submarine."

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