Manufacturer invests £5m in new facility to service major contract
A Birmingham automotive firm has invested £5m in a new facility to service a major contract as it looks to build the company up into a £50m turnover business.
The contract will see Lander Automotive supply formed and fabricated fuel and cooling pipes for a major car manufacturer’s new diesel and petrol engines.
The Woodgate Business Park manufacturer supplies a range of products such as coolant pipes, oil system pipes, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), seat structures and IP beams.
The decision to invest in the new facility came after the company realised that with the volumes of business expected with the new contract, capacity at its existing factory would be inadequate.
The new plant will also sustain future growth plans.
Daniel Reily, Lander’s finance and IT manager, said: “We are looking to increase our turnover from about £36m turnover to £50m by 2020. We are well on target to do that based on the work that we have already won with a global car manufacturer, we are also looking to build a relationship with another OEM on top of that.”
In 2014, the firm secured £2m medium term finance package from Barclays. This followed the company receiving a £1.06m loan and grant funding through the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI), managed by Finance Birmingham.
The funding enabled the firm to invest in new production lines and tooling to supply products for Jaguar Land Rover’s new range of Ingenium engines, produced at its factory on the i54 site near Wolverhampton.
Lander uses the latest CNC and automation technology and over the years it has also invested in WinMan Enterprise Resource Planning software, to create and maintain a lean and efficient production process.
“The new plant needed to be able to produce and supply over 10 million engine parts per year, corresponding to thousands of different part numbers, within specific time slots. With the investment we made into the latest technology we are able to run processes such as MRP within WinMan immediate after an order is received and we can plan and schedule production based on the availability of materials,” said Mr Reily.
“Overall, with all the changes and recent investment we are on track for our ambitious turnover goal.”
