Huntingdon-based Xaar, a manufacturer of high-tech print heads for industrial ink jet printers, has announced it will create at least 60 jobs this year alongside £10m of capacity investment.
The new jobs will largely be in research and development at Xaar which invests around 8% of turnover in R&D every year.
The R&D team doubled in size in 2012 and the additional 40-50 jobs in 2013 represent an overall staff increase of 18% for the firm.
Production jobs are also on the up at Xaar’s site in Huntingdon, near Cambridge, following the recent completion of a £22m factory extension. An additional £10m is to be spent on further capacity investments this year – bringing the potential of event more jobs.
Xaar now employs over 550 overall. It has seen 20% year on year growth over the past three years and achieved revenues of £86.3m last year.
Mark Alexander, director of marketing at Xaar said it is a “complete fallacy” that the UK was an uncompetitive place to manufacture goods and, when total costs were taken into account.
