Queen’s Award winning manufacturer and industrial trainer, AIS is expanding with a brand new £2.5million state-of-the-art manufacturing facility which will create up to 30 new jobs and help deliver the company’s ambitious future growth plans.
The company’s technical division, AIS Technical will expand its existing operation into an additional new 14,000sqft purpose-built site, which is located alongside AIS’s existing two acre world-class offshore training village and onsite hotel on the Tyne Tunnel Industrial Estate, North Tyneside.
AIS Technical is one of only a handful of companies worldwide to manufacture, export and install award-winning insulation and passive fire protection systems (PFP) for the global offshore, energy, petrochemical and heavy industry sectors. It produces 70,000 insulation jacketing systems annually, of which 70% are exported to more than 50 countries worldwide including Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Canada. AIS Technical also recently launched a new rigid PFP product which can be manufactured in any configuration to protect unusual-shaped industrial joints, flanges and valves – notoriously difficult equipment to coat effectively using traditional methods.
The new facility will be specially designed to create a world-class manufacturing and innovation centre for AIS Technical incorporating cutting-edge, fully-automated systems such as CAD design, precision-cutting, machining, assembly and despatch, as well as an extensive R&D centre. AIS Technical’s business development, management and administrative functions will also be transferred to the new centre.
This new facility will enable overall capacity to be increased by up to 80%, as well as boosting AIS Technical’s capability to research and develop new, innovative products tailored to industry needs including specialist welding and metal personnel protection lines.
Head of AIS Technical, Chris Evans, said: “The pace of growth for AIS has been phenomenal. In just 12 months we have grown turnover by 80%, doubled the size of our workforce and invested in new sites in Aberdeen, Grimsby and Huddersfield. We are now investing again to expand our North Shields site for the benefit of the entire business.
“The AIS Technical division offers a full turnkey service for clients that covers everything from survey to design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of our world-class insulation and PFP products, as well as providing services such as rope access and inspection. Our innovative solutions and overall approach has helped us develop an unrivalled global reputation and scoop several new lucrative contracts for some of the world’s leading energy companies.
“This new facility will help us to continue this success. We’ve set ourselves ambitious targets for the growth for AIS Technical over the next five years, including a big push into new territories in America and Brazil, leading to more new jobs and increased local investment.”
To find out more about AIS Technical please contact 0844 800 1810 or visit www.technical.aisgroup.co.uk
