Telford factory benefits from £3.6m investment
Millions of pounds are being pumped into a factory in Telford as part of a plan to grow the business.
American-based prototyping specialist Proto Labs, which has its European headquarters on the Halesfield Industrial Estate, is putting four million euros (£3.6 million) into infrastructure on this side of the Atlantic.
The investment has seen new CNC machines – which makes parts in quick succession automatically using computer programming – and injection moulding facilities installed at the Telford plant, where it employs more than 275 people.
It is also putting more money into its 3D printing facility in Germany.
The company has now confirmed that the move will also see it increase the size of its already-significant factory at Halesfield, adding to the 100,000 sq ft of space Proto Labs has in the town.
“Proto Labs offers a supremely fast and reliable service because customers today across all industries require fast turnaround, especially in product development.” said Lee Ball, Proto Labs' general manager in the UK.
"Our continuous investment allows us to meet the ever growing needs of our thousands of customers across all industries.
“We are seeing demand for moulded parts increase across the board year-over-year, from both long-standing and new customers, for a range of products and industries. To meet predicted levels of growth, a critical leverage is this investment in new technology.”
He added: "Additional space will be required within the next 18 to 24 months to accommodate our projected level of growth, both to our office space and manufacturing capacity."
The growth in capacity has been made necessary by business expansion across Proto Labs’ European locations.
Since 2015 the company has seen annual growth in excess of 20 percent in manufacturing and engineering, sales and administrative functions.
Including the new machines, Proto Labs has 130 CNC machines and 57 injection moulding machines.
Proto Labs is part of an American group based near Minneapolis in Minnesota in the USA. The business was founded in 1999 and now turns over more than $298 million (£230 million). The European operations brought in $63 million (£48.5 million) last year.
