18 NEWS
WELDING ENGINEERS
Welding Engineers, which has a production facility in Sunderland, has won a contract to work with up to 1,400 high street stores across the country. The engineering company makes industrial doors, security gates and fencing, shutters, and aluminium shop door systems and has been enlisted to work with Superdrug, Savers and The Perfume Shop on sites throughout the UK.
The contract, won via a facilities management partner, will involve Welding Engineers offering a repair and installation service in the event of break-ins, breakdowns and upgrades at the stores. It comes during a period of sustained growth for the plant on Washington’s Parsons Industrial Estate. Welding Engineers, a national business headquartered in Glasgow, opened its North East operation in 2009 and this year expects it to generate £2m in sales – up from £1.5m in 2016 and £1.75m last year.
It will add a handful of new staff to its current 24-strong Sunderland team this year, and has also launched a new apprentice scheme to bring fresh talent into the business.
North East area manager Michael Binnie said: “We have always aimed for controlled growth rather than rapid expansion and this approach seems to have paid off. “We see lots of opportunities in the retail sector, despite its current challenges, and are also investing in new equipment to step up our capabilities in steel fabrication – an area of growing demand.” The growth of Welding Engineers’ North East operation has been supported by Sunderland City Council’s business investment team. Councillor Henry Trueman, deputy leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “Welding Engineers is a great manufacturing success story that has managed to achieve continual growth since its move to Sunderland in 2009.”
WELDING WORLD MAGAZINE | ISSUE 02 | APRIL 2018 INNOVATE UK FUND
Innovate UK has up to £72 million to invest in establishing a core innovation hub to support collaboration between industry and academia and transform the construction sector.
The funding is for UK-based research and technology organisations that already have substantive existing facilities and expertise to work with others in the construction sector, such as businesses, the research base or public sector organisations.
The way we create buildings has not changed in 40 years, and construction has not seen the same increases in productivity as other industries. The sector is also facing a skills crisis due to an ageing workforce. This competition aims to fund a single, core innovation hub that will develop and commercialise new digital and manufacturing technologies for construction. The hub should focus on how to: create better performing built assets increase the
METALTECH
LTi Metaltech, a world leader in precision fabrication and welding in the fluid controls, healthcare and green energy sectors is calling for increased industry-wide efforts to help resolve the severe skills shortage within the UK’s engineering sector. Given the CBI’s latest announcement that the UK’s manufacturing industry ended last year with order books at a thirty-year high, LTi’s lead and technical director, Edgar Rayner, believes there’s never been a more critical moment to address the skills issue.
“As a growing business operating in sectors that demand the most rigorous degree of precision and quality, which includes the fluid control sector, we at LTi Metaltech look to hire fabricators and welders who are at the top of their game. Our clients require solutions to sometimes quite challenging
engineering problems and that calls on the high end of engineering skill and experience.” LTi Metaltech, based on Abingdon’s international business and science park, has a blue-chip client base including Siemens and and Emco Wheaton. “We’re fortunate to
employ some high calibre engineers in our team but hiring new people with the right skills or experience is by no means straightforward and, and I know we are not unusual here. Like many British engineering firms, we’ve also taken on skilled engineers from outside the UK, including our quality engineer who is eastern European. If we are to continue to grow our country’s manufacturing capability we need to put skills development much higher up the national agenda.”
According to Engineering UK,
industry-wide adoption of emerging digital and manufacturing technologies to design new processes to improve productivity in construction To be successful in their application, the research and technology organisation will need to demonstrate there is a commitment from the private sector to invest and use the hub once it is complete. The transforming construction challenge aims to support the construction industry to adopt the latest digital manufacturing technologies to produce safe, healthy, efficient building. This will help buildings to be constructed 50% faster, 33% cheaper and with half the lifetime carbon emissions.
It is the part of government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which brings together world-leading research with businesses to take on the major societal and economic challenges of our time.
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