Car parts manufacturer and logistics firm Unipart has signed a new parts deal with the Cowley Mini plant.

Under the agreement, the firms, which are near neighbours, will see exhausts made at Unipart’s manufacturing plant in Coventry distributed to the Mini production line through a new facility set up at Unipart’s site off Garsington Road.

Jobs will be created but details of how many and the level of investment involved are being kept under wraps.

It comes as Unipart bosses unveiled an operating profit of £28.7m for 2011 which excludes figures from the loss-making automotive division, a controlling interest of which was sold to private equity firm H2 Equity Partners last October for an undisclosed sum.

With the division included, total operating profit fell from £9.5m in 2010 to to £8.4m last year.

Unipart now employs 850 workers directly at the site out of 8,500 nationally with H2 employing about 200 more in the automotive division. A total of 1,100 jobs have been created across the group in the last year.

Group chief executive John Neill said: “Overall the group has seen very encouraging performance and growth against a fragile economy this year.

“The story is one of continued growth while managing significant levels of change in our businesses and in our customers’ businesses.”

During 2011, Unipart saw significant growth in new business internationally including winning a joint venture seven-year contract to provide fleet maintenance and logistics service to RailCorp, the state-owned Australian rail corporation, expected to generate £900m.

The firm also expanded its operations with new Chinese sites in Guangzhou and Beijing, supporting the rapid growth of Jaguar Land Rover and in Sanand and Pune in India, supporting Tata Motors.

New logistics contracts were also signed with Virgin Media, Three and Sky.