Plans approved for £12.5m facility to drive low carbon technologies

Ideal Heating has received the green light to establish a £12.5m research and development facility to support low carbon technologies – including heat pumps.

Hull City Council has granted full planning permission for the UK Technology Centre at Ideal Heating’s headquarters site in the city.

The R&D facility will create a testbed for product development and advancements in the heating solutions to help decarbonise UK homes and business premises.

The facility, at Ideal Heating’s site at National Avenue in Hull, will see the business expand its R&D team.

It represents a significant investment by the business and will play key role in its transition to low carbon heating solutions including heat pumps.

Construction of the UK Technology Centre is expected to begin this October and is due be completed in late 2024. The R&D centre is set to be operational in early 2025.

Ideal Heating engineering director Helen Villamuera with R&D director Phil Kent

Ideal Heating engineering director, Helen Villamuera, said: “Our UK Technology Centre is part of a major £60m investment we’re making in our Hull site, to support heat pump manufacturing, distribution and innovation in heating technologies.

“From the outset, Hull City Council has been fully supportive of our plans, which will create highly skilled jobs in the city and expand our existing R&D capabilities.

“We’re pleased to have secured full planning permission for the UK Technology Centre. We will now begin a competitive tender process to appoint a contractor to deliver this project.”

The two-storey building, with an additional partial storey to accommodate plant rooms for the centre, will help to develop and refine the low carbon heating technologies, including heat pumps, needed to decarbonise UK’s 25 million homes.

The Government has set ambitious targets for head pump deployment, including for 600,000 heat pumps to be installed in domestic properties annually by 2028.

The UK Technology Centre will provide a purpose-designed new home for Ideal Heating’s expert R&D team, which has an increasing range of engineering roles related to design, development, electronics, simulation and product testing disciplines.

Laboratory facilities within the 38,000 sq ft building will enable the R&D team to simulate a range of scenarios and conditions to test new innovations and advancements.

The R&D facility is one of a series of major investments by the company at its Hull base.

Construction work has been completed on a heat pump production facility and expanded distribution centre, totalling £20m of investment.

The firm confirmed recently that it had started producing a new monobloc heat pump, Logic Air, in Hull as it supports the rollout of renewable heating products. 

Finally, the business has opened a £2.2m National Training and Technology Centre in Hessle, with capacity for up to 5,000 installers every year to learn the skills needed to supply and maintain heat pumps.