United Kingdom-based Boddingtons Plastics Ltd. has kicked off a 4.6 million pound ($7 million) expansion that will double the injection molder's production capacity by the time development work is completed early next year.
Part of the move for Tonbridge, England-based Boddingtons will see the firm add 35 presses to its existing portfolio of 26 and the extension of its clean room facility from 110 square meters to 680 square meters, or about 7,300 square feet.
Since taking the decision five years ago to concentrate on medical and technical projects, the group had seen a significant inflow of work, leading to the need for more space, according to Keith Lawson, Boddington's commercial director.
“We've tripled sales in the last five years and we're still growing, thanks to work coming in from new and existing customers," he told PRW, a sister publication of Plastics News.
“And if we don't expand in this way we will simply be stifling the group's progress.”
The company also has its own in-house mold making.
Sales at Boddingtons hit around 15 million pounds ($22.8 million) last year and the firm expects this to rise by 7 percent in 2015.
Lawson said the shift in Boddingtons' product focus had been the main reason for the sales boom.
“We moved away from trade molding and into medical, which is now 25 percent of our business, and technical work,” he said.
Lawson said Boddingtons had a number of products in development that would be manufactured in “significant volumes” next year, following the extension of the group's plant.
