British car maker, Jaguar Land Rover, said it intends to invest about 5 million U.S. dollars to set up a plant in Zambia as part of its efforts to penetrate the African market, the Times of Zambia reported on Monday.

"We feel that Zambia is an important market for us in the sub- Saharan Africa and this is why we appointed the new importer last year and opened this temporal facility in May, because it was important that we service Zambians," Mathew Creese, the company's head of importer network, was quoted as saying by the paper. The company, he said, has acquired a piece of land in Lusaka, the Zambian capital for the construction of the plant to be built by the end of next year, adding that all the paper work for the construction of the plant have been done and taken for approval to relevant government agencies. "Towards the end of 2014 we will open our brand new facility. Once opened it will be the most advanced facility in Africa and the world at large," he added. Endi