A specialist Telford manufacturing company has used a grant of almost £100,000 to expand, creating a number of jobs in the process.
Midland Alloy Ltd, specialists in aluminium section bending, complex CNC machining & coded TIG welding, has built a warehouse extension and taken on six new people after receiving £97,285 from the Marches Building Investment Grant (MBIG).
The new 4,000 sq ft extension at Midland Alloy’s Stafford Park base is part of a larger £500,000 investment in the firm’s future. The new warehouse extension features a six-metre high, dedicated pallet racking storage facility for long lengths of aluminium, other materials and tools, and extra space for manufacturing.
MBIG programme manager Caroline Cattle with Paul Beirne of Midland Alloy
Speaking about the expansion, Midland Alloy director Paul Beirne said: “This investment will also increase manufacturing space within the existing main factory with the potential to reduce operating costs and increase the capacity for sales growth and more jobs.
“Our competitiveness should be enhanced due to quicker, efficient and safer methods of handling, storage and first stage processing of long lengths of aluminium extruded stock.
“Six full time employees have already been engaged and the company is looking to hire extra qualified experienced engineers for both the core business and also RadiAl architectural aluminium window products.
“Whilst we have been very severely affected, like most manufacturers, by the Coronavirus lockdown in March, our large size capacity complex five-axis machining facilities specialising in machining aluminium vehicle chassis extrusions, castings and aluminium extruded assemblies for electric vehicle battery trays, have recently attracted new projects from within the automotive industry.
“The MBIG grant has been a major incentive to undertake the new extension and assist future business expansion after a solution has been found for the Coronavirus problem.”
The £2.2m MBIG programme, which is delivered by Herefordshire Council, helps businesses across the region benefit from grants of up to £150,000 to help meet the cost of building new premises, or extending and reconfiguring existing ones.
It is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and supported by the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Marches Growth Hub.
*Header image courtesy of DepositPhotos