PVC door and window profile extruder WHS Halo Systems Ltd. plans to add eight extrusion lines and create around 140 jobs.
The Minworth-based company will invest about £4 million ($7 million) in the project, said Managing Director Winston Duguid. The company currently has 31 lines, and will add the others over the next four years.
The project will increase output and improve efficiency, by centralizing operations at its main Minworth site.
The company, part of Bowater Building Products Ltd., claims to be Britain's sixth-largest profile extruder.
The company currently has several sites, some rented, around the area. By adding another 60,000 square feet to its present 50,000-square-foot plant, it aims to concentrate all its operations on one central site, confirmed Duguid.
WHS Halo was founded in 1994. The company employs almost 500, primarily at units around Minworth but also a smaller fabrication plant in Coventry, England. Halo recorded annual sales of £48 million ($89 million) last year, Duguid said.
The company is among a number of profile producers expanding their production in what is a rapidly growing, if still fiercely competitive, market in Britain.
Synseal Extrusions Ltd. of Sutton-in-Ashfield, England, has invested nearly £10 million ($19 million) in a plant extension in the last 18 months. Included is a 27,000-square-foot plant expansion, the addition of five high-speed extrusion lines, and doubled raw material capacity with a new blending plant. It is hiring 71 employees.
Other firms expanding are profile extruder Duraflex Ltd., part of Masco Corp. of Taylor, Mich., and Eurocell Profiles Ltd. of Alfreton, England. Duraflex has just completed a new 260,000-square-foot headquarters in Tewkesbury, England. It is consolidating its scattered operations at the new site, and installing two new Cincinnati extrusion lines, giving it a total of 29 lines.
Eurocell, part of Fairview plc, which is owned by the Belgian Tessenderlo Group, has invested more than £5 million ($9 million) in a new window profile extrusion plant next to its existing facility in Alfreton. It is set for completion in early 2005.