Duke of Kent opens Naylor Industries' new Barnsley factory following £5m investment

HRH the Duke of Kent has formally opened a new factory extension for Naylor Industries in Barnsley.

The £5m investment will allow the construction products company to make larger diameter pipes to carry big volumes of surface water, which will help protect Britain against flooding.

The family-owned company has installed a high-tech production line to manufacture large diameter plastic drainage pipes for its customers in the infrastructure, agriculture and utilities markets.

The project will manufacture double-walled pipes which are larger still - 750mm, 900mm and 1050mm diameter.

The Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership provided a £615k grant to support the extension.

While the main plant was purchased from its German machinery supplier, around a dozen local suppliers were engaged in the factory extension project and enabling works.

The project has created 20 new jobs on the Cawthorne site, including a number of engineering roles and a team of Naylor employees were sent to Germany for training with the new equipment.

Founded in 1890, Naylor now employs 400 people at six sites across the UK.

The Duke of Kent, who is the Queen’s cousin, toured the factory with Edward Naylor and met with staff members and apprentices.

CEO Edward Naylor said: “Queen Victoria was on the throne when my great-grandfather founded Naylor Industries. It was an honour to show the Duke of Kent around our facilities.”

Mr Naylor said the company trades internationally and has exported pipes onto every continent and into 65 overseas markets.

He added: “If you use the best available technology and you are efficient in your raw material sourcing and processes, the fact that your unit cost of labour is more expensive than overseas competitors is mitigated by the fact that they have to pay a lot of money to ship their products across the world.”

The company’s plastic pipe production uses large volumes of recycled post-consumer and post-industrial plastic waste.

Naylor made the investment decision before Britain voted to leave the European Union; the decision was partly driven by the increasingly unpredictable climate.

Mr Naylor added: “Every year we seem to be seeing once-in-a-lifetime weather events.

“As it rains more heavily, we need larger capacity pipelines to deal with storm water. Large diameter pipes are an important part of measures to defend the country against flooding.”

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