HydraForce officially opened its brand new 120,000 sq ft facility today, as part of Birmingham’s Advanced Manufacturing Hub at Aston Hall Road.
The firm is the first manufacturer to commit to Birmingham’s Advanced Manufacturing Hub at Aston Hall Road.
It welcomed around 100 guests, including Khalid Mahood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr who joined 300 HydraForce staff to celebrate.
It completed and moved into the building last year, following £1.8m of investment from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund.
The new facility is the largest single investment the company has made to date, and signals its continued confidence in Birmingham as a European manufacturing and skills hub.
The building was officially opened by John Pepe, chairman of the Board at HydraForce Inc, the Birmingham manufacturer’s parent company based in the US.
The new facility adds an additional 75,000 sqft of manufacturing capacity, enabling the company to boost production of its electrohydraulic cartridge valves and other products for the European market. The three-story building has production and testing areas on the ground floor, engineering and sales offices, and training areas on the first and second floors.
HydraForce Ltd is an international manufacturer of high performance electrohydraulic controls, which turns over in excess of £50m.
The firm celebrates 28 years in Birmingham this year, and is the first tenant of the city’s Advanced Manufacturing Hub, one of six economic zones identified by the City Council to drive Birmingham’s future growth ambitions.
HydraForce, a privately-owned company, operates five manufacturing facilities across the world. HydraForce’s other sites are its corporate headquarters, innovation centre, and precision machining centre in North America and a manifold assembly plant in Asia. HydraForce’s previous manufacturing facility in Birmingham, at St. Stephens Street, has been sold.
Peter Macdonald, HydraForce’s managing director, commented: “Our new Birmingham facility is helping us improve our speed to market throughout Europe, and into Turkey and India.
“More than 80% of the product we build in Birmingham is exported. This is a really good news story for British manufacturing.”
HydraForce’s skilled and motivated workforce is one key reason for the business’s resilience and growth, added Macdonald: “Our employee’s knowledge and expertise is invaluable to our continuous growth and many of them have grown up with the company.”
With the company’s Birmingham contingent expected to increase to 500 people by 2020, Macdonald concluded: “Attracting the right people with the right skills at the right time is an on-going challenge for every engineering manufacturer, but our well-established apprenticeship programme and strong links with higher education make us an attractive career choice for many.”
