A Somerset electrical manufacturer is to create 29 highly skilled new jobs after winning a grant of £150,000 from the GAIN Growth Fund.
Elecsis Switchgear is a provider of bespoke electrical MV and LV switchgear solutions wordwide. The business successfully bid for a grant to support a planned £424,000 project to pay for new machinery and grow its business.
The expansion will create 29 new jobs at the firm’s Bridgwater head office over the next two years.
The grant is one of 26 awards totalling £2.8million which have been made from the GAIN Growth Fund this year to growing South West businesses eager to expand.
The Growth Fund, a programme developed as part of the Plymouth and South West Peninsula City Deal, aims to support companies with growth aspirations to expand. The the grants are scheduled to create 479 jobs and unlock £13.5m in private investment.
Nick Messarra, business development director at Elecsis Switchgear, said: “We wanted to expand as part of our long-term strategy for the business, and we were absolutely delighted to win this grant from the Growth Fund to support our plans.
“The cash means we can buy new equipment and machinery straight away to make the business more efficient, and we can create more good quality, skilled jobs for local people in Bridgwater.
“The Growth Fund team has supported us enormously throughout the application process and they have truly been a huge help.
“We are over the moon to have won this grant; it has brought forward our growth plans tremendously, and saved us many years of waiting.”
Elecsis Switchgear has been trading for over 30 years and provides electrical and instrumentation engineering, offering clients a complete package from initial design and manufacture through to installation and maintenance.
The firm, which has regional offices in Hampshire and Scotland, works in sectors spanning aerospace, education, healthcare and construction, and has manufactured in excess of £30m of equipment for the Ministry of Defence, with current major multi-million pound international projects.
The £150,000 grant from the GAIN Growth Fund is one of 26 awards ranging from £30,000 to £250,000 made to businesses from Somerset, North Devon, Plymouth, Torbay and Cornwall which demonstrated impressive growth plans and put forward ideas which they needed support to help them to deliver a specific project which will create new jobs.
These grants will be supplemented by private investment totalling £13.5m from the individual businesses to achieve their growth plans, and the projects are forecast to create 479 jobs over the next two years.
John Hutchings, grant manager for the GAIN Growth Fund, said: “This expansion is great news as it means sustainable, skilled jobs will be created at a long-standing business in Somerset, boosting its security for the future.”
