A hi tech company in Ellesmere Port is to up sticks after securing a £500,000 investment.
Surface Transforms is to move its manufacturing from the Olympic Park on Poole Hall Road to Knowsley Business Park where more space is on offer to meet growing business demands.
The company, which currently employs a workforce of 30, makes high-performance brakes for supercars and aircraft. Its customers include Speke-based supercar manufacturer BAC Mono and it is aiming to create up to 50 new jobs.
The firm says it had been offered and had accepted a package of £500,000 of financial support through the Regional Growth Fund made up of a £200,000 grant and an interest free loan £300,000.
In addition Knowsley Council has also offered financial support to establish the new factory.
It points out a condition of the grant was the planned factory expansion should be in the Liverpool city region and it will move to an existing building on the Knowsley Business Park.
An agreement covers a 2.1 acre site with 55,000sq ft of factory space which the company will occupy in two phases taking 30,000 sq ft from this September and the remaining 25,000 sq ft from September 2019.
The current Ellesmere Port plant occupying 12,000 sq ft will be vacated when the lease expires in early 2017.
Surface Transforms chief executive Kevin Johnson said: “These announcements are a significant milestone in the development of the company.
“The recent half-year statement included details of one aerospace and five automotive ‘game-changing’ contracts which, if all were successfully concluded, would in total build up to £15m per annum of sales in the period 2018 to 2020.”
He explained: “Our current site is insufficient for a company of that size and we have therefore been searching for a new site which can both cope with this demand level as well as providing further space for target sales beyond £15m in subsequent years.”
The company, founded in 1992, has a team of PhD-qualified scientists and degree-qualified engineers which is continually developing new processes for the production of carbon-ceramic materials and new products. It also has a sales office in Germany.
