Rotherham Council's planning board has granted approval to Rolls-Royce for its next factory at the Advanced Manufacturing Park, while construction has begun on the new blade casting facility.
Known as “Project PoWeR”, the facility will manufacture and assemble large pressure vessels for the next generation of civil nuclear power stations.
The development on about seven hectares (17 acres) of land will include a 21,000 sq metre (226,000 sq ft) factory building that will be about 33 metres at its highest point, and able to accommodate the manufacture of vessels weighing some 140 tonnes and standing 23 metres high.
The project will bring another 180 Rolls-Royce jobs to the AMP site.
Construction is scheduled to begin in autumn 2012 and it is anticipated that the first of the pressure vessels would be constructed in 2015.
AMP marketing manager Simon Spode said; “The Council’s approval for this facility is great news and will further cement the relationship between the AMP and Rolls-Royce.
“We look forward to working with Rolls-Royce and their partners to bring this project to a successful conclusion, in the same way that we are already doing with Rolls-Royce’s advanced aerospace blade facility.”
This is the second Rolls-Royce facility to locate onto the AMP in South Yorkshire, following the start of construction in July of an Advanced Blade Casting Facility (ABCF).
The factory will be capable of manufacturing 100,000 blades per year when fully operational. The turbine blade is a critical component of the jet engine and one single turbine blade extracts around 1,000 horsepower from the gas flow towards the rear of the engine, which is equivalent to the power of an Formula One car, to drive the engine’s compressors.
The build began in July with the first components scheduled to be delivered in 2014.
