Engineering company invests £1.7m in factory expansion

Engineering company Yorkshire Laser Fabrication is investing £1.7m in a major factory expansion.

The Castleford-based company have outgrown their current factory and are moving to larger premises.

The new 36,000 sq ft factory in Normanton is nearly three times the size of its current 12,500 sq ft Phillip Street premises.

Lloyds Bank facilitated the financing for the deal.

YFL said that the expansion was needed due to increased demand following the diversification of its services via training.

YLF sent three engineers to York University to enhance their CAD which allowed the production of high quality design and fabrication work.

It hopes to expand its existing team from 35 to 50 as it seeks further UK wide and international contracts.

Managing director Matthew Orford said: “Our business has been built on high quality specialist laser cutting and fabrication engineering services to the power, heating, telecoms, medical, food and auto sectors.

“We have successfully completed work for the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai as well as supplying cabinets and light brackets for the telecoms and oil sectors respectively in hostile environments such as the North Sea.

“I wanted to grow the engineering team and make sure they had the skills to take on more complex and detailed work. We also wanted the ISO accreditation to go after bigger and better contracts. This puts us well placed to go after new customers in diverse sectors while maintaining service to our existing customers,” he added.

“The support that we’ve received from Leeds City Region LEP has been fantastic. As well as helping us secure new premises, we’ve completed three lots of completely different training that have really put the company in a strong position.

“We’re really looking to build on this now and the expansion into new premises in spring of this year is just one part of our ambitious expansion plans that we expect to really kick start our growth.”