The long-awaited restarting of production at Longbridge, the old MG Rover car factory, has suffered a fresh setback after a series of problems with shipments of components from China.

Nanjing Automobile Corporation, the carmaker that bought the assets of the defunct MG Rover business, had intended to start selling the revamped MG TF sports car this autumn. However, after problems with parts being shipped from China, the launch has been put back to next March.

NAC UK, the division of the carmaker based at the Birmingham factory, is now seeking to source some components from Europe. The company denied that there were problems with the quality of the parts and said that breakages and damage had occurred when the supplies were sent on the 10,000km (6,200 mile) journey.

Switching some sourcing to Europe marks a U-turn in the strategy of Nanjing, which had based much of its revival plan on sourcing cheaper parts from China.

A spokeswoman for Nanjing said: “Breakages are occurring during transportation and so we are sourcing new suppliers. But this process takes time to make sure the components are compatible with everything else.”

The Chinese company is now looking at gearing up production in the new year to send the cars out to dealers by mid-February, ready for the new registration plate in March.

The latest setback comes after a series of delays since Nanjing won the bid battle for the assets of Rover more than two years ago. At first the business struggled to find financial backing for resumption of production at Longbridge and said that it was talking with several partners. In May this year Nanjing held an open day at Longbridge to show that it was ready for business and said that the first MG TFs to be made in the UK under its ownership would be on sale in September or October this year.

Annual production targets are also set to be revised. However, they could move in either direction depending on the outcome of merger talks between Nanjing and Shanghai Automotive Corporation, its larger rival and the company with which it fought for the takeover of the collapsed Rover business. Shanghai had been a prospective joint venture partner of MG Rover when the British carmaker collapsed and had bought the intellectual property rights to Rover cars, but not the MG TF sports car. Then, in a surprise move, the smaller Nanjing car company beat Shanghai in the race to buy the assets from the administrators for £52 million. Now the two are in merger talks that could lead to greater investment in Longbridge as a European base for the Chinese businesses.

At present Nanjing plans to make 3,000 MG TFs at Longbridge next year. Originally it had said that it would scale up to 15,000 a year. However, the spokeswoman said that those figures would be revised and would hinge on the merger discussions.

There are just 160 workers preparing for production to resume at Longbridge. In its heyday, in the early 1970s, more than 30,000 people worked at the site. In its last incarnation, run by a consortium of local business people, it employed 6,000. Nanjing is to mount a recruitment campaign as it gears up for production, but does not yet know what the total workforce will be.

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