The development more than doubles the size of EJOT’s Sherburn-in-Elmet site, creating a state-of-the-art facility tailored to the needs of the UK market, with class-leading support for customer innovation. Overall, the new site provides 4,500 sq. m of new manufacturing space and a logistical control centre with 40% more storage capacity. But one of the most important developments is the upgrade to the EJOT Applitec centre which is already unique in the industry.
This ‘application technology’ facility will be unlike any testing and R&D facility available here in the UK, triple the size of the existing centre. It already provides a valuable resource for fastener testing and new product development in conjunction with OEMs and is set to be boosted with additional new resources including two new environmental testing laboratories where the long-term performance of EJOT products can be reliably assessed.
Robert Hardstaff, Managing Director at EJOT UK said: “This investment in our UK site represents a major step forward for EJOT, giving us a unique position in the market in respect of the levels of technical, logistical and sales support we can offer, with a strengthening of our manufacturing base.
“Our ethos of ‘converting customer problems into product solutions’, both reactively and often proactively to prevent problems evolving in the first place, requires us to have the right technical resources and quality procedures in place to meet whatever challenges our customers face. Our new facilities will enable us to do this in a way that not only continues this level of support, but also reaffirms our unique positioning to the industries we now serve.”
Valued at over £6m in 2016, the EJOT UK investment programme was proposed and agreed well ahead of the implementation of a post-Brexit agreement. This was key to the company’s long term vision to provide market-leading support to UK customers whilst creating an EJOT Group manufacturing centre of excellence for many of its key products in Yorkshire.
The extended facility will allow for increased production of EJOT’s core range of fasteners for both the construction and engineering sectors. The extended site will also include a new facility for manufacturing the LIEBIG range of heavy duty anchors, the brand acquired by the EJOT Group from Finnish company Sormat in 2017.
The newly expanded site supports EJOT’s family business approach that drives its global strategy to continuously re-invest profits into the business and futureproof its employment needs by providing youth career opportunities in highly skilled and technical roles.
Currently 15% of EJOT’s UK HQ workforce benefits from an apprenticeship programme in various formats across different areas of the business. These apprentices span technical services and quality management, through to engineering and manufacturing, working towards qualification goals at both vocational and degree level, with participants attending college or university on a day release basis.
