Member Article

New home for expanding Nelson food equipment firm

Riggs Autopack, which manufactures equipment for food producers, has moved into new premises to further ambitious expansion plans.

The firm, part of the Fort Vale Group, is based in Nelson, Lancashire, making depositors and filling machines for the food production industry. It has relocated from Southfield Street to a new purpose-built site at Premier Mill, Brunswick Street.

Riggs Autopack currently employs 28 staff encompassing sales, design, production, research and development, parts supply, service and maintenance.

The move provides room to further expand, win new orders, and potentially recruit more personnel in key areas.

David Smith, Technical Director at Fort Vale, who has overseen the transference into the new premises said: “There is room to take on more projects at the same time and space to do much more fabrication, which means we can move forward far quicker. It will open up all sorts of opportunities.”

The new unit, which covers 50,000 square feet, has been specifically re-fitted throughout by The Fort Vale Group, with the installation of new offices, meeting and exhibition rooms, training area, shop floor production, product testing and machine demonstration. A new lathe has also been installed to help the firm manufacture complex components, and extend its work with some of the biggest names in the food industry on a national and international level.

Riggs Autopack has become a UK market leader and a preferred supplier to Kerry Foods. It is hoping to win further similar agreements by providing high quality food production equipment to accurately fill a huge variety of container types and size with liquid, semi-liquid and suspended solid products.

General Manager Nigel Matthews said: “Having more manufacturing space will allow us to further expand and bring some of the sub-contracting work back in-house that we’ve previously put out in the past.”

“By doing this, it will allow us to create jobs and employ more people from the local area. As part of the company’s continued growth strategy, we have plans in place to hire extra staff during 2013 including 2 machine shop apprentices, and are currently looking to add to our external sales team and in-house design department”.

“All these factors in conjunction with the move to our new factory, can only help us to keep growing further and maintain our market position.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .