A British factory has secured £1.2million in export contracts and increased its workforce by 20 per cent in yet another Brexit success story.
Alucast, which is one of the UK’s busiest foundries, signed contracts for high-quality parts used in car manufacturing and hydraulics.
The foundry, located in the heart of the Black Country, melts metal into shapes and employs around 120 highly-skilled workers.
Alucast invested £2m into new machinery, including an 800-tonne fully-automated die casting machine producing in-demand parts.
Alucast invested £2m into new machinery (stock pic)
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The company, which was founded in Walsall in 1967, is becoming increasingly competitive overseas.
Boss John Swift said: “This is our largest investment drive in nearly a decade and reflects an increase in demand for our expansive machining capabilities.
“This is proving extremely important as we are offering added value services for a host of blue-chip companies and vehicle manufacturers directly.
“We’re offering them the security of supply they are crying out for.”
Alucast is a founding member of the Manufacturing Assembly Network (MAN).
MAN, which consists of eight sub-contractors and an engineering design agency, delivered a blueprint for making the country globally competitive.
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Alucast is a founding member of the Manufacturing Assembly Network (MAN)
ALUCAST LTD
It is also calling on Whitehall to help facilitate growth by providing tailored support and removing bureaucratic barriers.
Brexit Britain’s manufacturing output stands at £183bn, making it the ninth largest in the world.
Alucast managing director Martin Haynes said: “There are a lot of opportunities out there for UK manufacturing, but many of them will require investment in new technology and people to make them a reality."
“At a time when interest rates are high, it would be great to see the Government act and do something to encourage and reward firms who are prepared to spend and improve their businesses."
He added: “We’ll do the innovation; all the politicians need to do is give us a level playing field and economic conditions that don’t change every week.”
The company, which was founded in Walsall in 1967, is becoming increasingly competitive overseas
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Remain campaigners warned in 2016 leaving the Brussels bloc would have a detrimental impact on British manufacturing.
Nissan and Airbus were among the companies identified as being at risk of shutting up shop which have decided to push ahead with investment.
Responding to such claims at the time, leading Brexit campaigner and Surrey Heath MP Michael Gove said: “The City of London would become a ghost town, our manufacturing industries would be sanctioned more punitively than even communist North Korea, decades would pass before a single British Land Rover or Mr Kipling cake could ever again be sold in France and in the meantime our farmers would have been driven from the land by poverty worse than the Potato Famine.”
He added: “It’s a deeply pessimistic view of the British people’s potential, and a profoundly negative vision of the future which just isn’t rooted in reality.
“The idea that if Britain voted to leave the European Union we would instantly become some sort of hermit kingdom – a North Atlantic North Korea, only without that country’s fund of international good will – it’s a fantasy, it’s a phantom, it’s a great grotesque patronising and preposterous Peter Mandelsonian conceit, that imagines that the people of this country are mere children, capable of being frightened into obedience by conjuring up new bogeymen every night.”