A smart metering factory in Stockport is playing a big role in the UK and European roll-out of smart meters, and expects 200 more jobs by 2017.
Makers of intelligent metering systems Landis+Gyr hosted Baroness Verma, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Energy and Climate Change, to its Stockport manufacturing facility on March 7.
Landis+Gyr is a partner in the UK’s largest smart metering programme that includes British Gas’s deployment of free smart meters to encourage energy efficiency.
The minister, whose brief includes responsibility for smart meters, visited the site see the effect on UK industry from the national roll-out.
The Stockport plant produces around 20,000 advanced gas meters per week and employs 300 people. As the roll-out gathers momentum, the company plans to expand its North West operations, expecting to quadruple capacity and hire a further 200 people by 2017.
Landis+Gyr is also developing much of the intellectual property there that will underpin smart metering deployments across Europe.
Baroness Verma said: “Smart meters will be the cornerstone of a vastly improved national energy infrastructure, giving rise to and supporting a whole range of low-carbon technologies in and out of the home.
“Households will be able to take a much firmer grip on their energy usage and costs, energy companies will be able to smoothly integrate new forms of energy into the overall mix and emissions will come down. .
Steve Cunningham, CEO of Landis+Gyr UK, Ireland and Scandinavia said: “The plant here is integral to Landis+Gyr’s operations, in the UK and for the whole of Europe. In addition to designing the technology that will be used in the smart meters, the plant manufactures those meters, supplying UK designed and built products to the whole of Europe.
“Smart metering provides a real opportunity for the UK to reinvigorate its design and manufacturing base and to use that drive to benefit consumers and the economy alike.”
