Member Article

Blue-chip wins fuel expansion for Gateshead engineering business

Engineering firm WHP is moving its Gatehead headquarters to a larger base on Metro Riverside Park.

The new head office, three times the size of WHP’s previous premises at Staithes, brings the firm’s 80-strong team of in-house planners, designers, programmers, engineers, technical experts and business administration functions under one roof.

The new site is also home to WHP’s Technical Centre, which is a 20,565-square-feet manufacturing facility and showcase for the high volumes of modular, stainless-steel products and controls that are expertly built, tested, commissioned and validated in-house.

The move follows WHP’s success in securing a number of notable, blue-chip contracts. This includes the design and build of a critical, cleanroom system for Siemens at Drax Power Station, Yorkshire.

Scheduled for completion in August 2017, the Siemen’s project provides a highly-practical, controlled-maintenance area for planned outages at the Power Station, which supplies seven per cent of the UK’s energy.

Ian Lichfield, CEO of WHP said, “The Drax project brought with it both varied and complex requirements, which enabled us to deploy the full scale of our engineering skill from initial needs assessment, subsequent concept and detailed design, manufacturing and implementation of critical processes to structural build.”

“In addition to Siemens, we’re winning larger projects and working with an increasing number of highly-respected companies in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology including BASF Pharma, GSK and Oxford Biomedica who play a significant role in the development of health-enhancing solutions,” he said.

“Our role as an upstream supplier to these critical industries mean that we must deliver high-quality solutions on time and budget. Our investment in larger headquarters has strengthened our infrastructure and provided the much-needed space for our growing teams to continue to deliver best-in-class solutions,” said Lichfield.

“As our specialist engineering knowledge and innovations continue to drive our growth, our move reflects our deep commitment to improving capacity and efficiency to support our clients to achieve quick returns now and in years to come,” he said.

“Our new premises marks exciting times ahead for WHP. The additional space cements the next stage in our development and provides room to support our growth aspirations,” said Lichfield.”