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Rover's new owners import Chinese cooks for canteen

"They don't regard sandwiches as proper food and they don't like the Chinese restaurants over here."

Anonymous British negotiator

The new Chinese owners of the MG Rover plant in Birmingham have imported their own cooks to reopen its canteen after British cuisine failed to impress them, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

Nanjing Automobile Group Corp (南京汽車), which hopes to build sports cars at the mothballed Longbridge plant, has also brought in "scores" of engineering and manufacturing specialists from its home base in the east of China.

But it is the cooks who have raised eyebrows as well as concerns that the plant's revival might not generate many new jobs in the West Midlands, the historic home of British automaking.

"They don't regard sandwiches as proper food and they don't like the Chinese restaurants over here," a Briton involved in negotiations with Nanjing Automobile was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Nanjing agreed last month to pay just over ?50 million (US$87 million) for the assets of MG Rover, the UK's last volume automaker.

It did so after MG Rover failed to reach a partnership deal with China's premier automaker, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (上海汽車).

Nanjing Automobile has yet to set out a business plan for Longbridge, and it is expected to pack up much of the factory's machinery and send it to China to build vehicles there for the mass market.
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