A Midland manufacturer has created dozens of new jobs after a surge in demand for its lightweight products.
Warwickshire firm Penso has taken on 60 new employees on the back of a £4 million sales rise.
The company has secured deals with a host of new contracts with car makers, railway companies and the defence contractors which have seen its turnover rise to more than £20 million.
READ MORE: {}
The Coventry firm said the new intake included 15 local graduates and apprentices.
Michael Collins, group sales and marketing director, said the announcement came on the same day that the 3,000th Mercedes Vito taxi rolled off its Woodhams Road production line, with volumes for this model alone set to double in 2015.
He said Penso had been boosted by new directives forcing car-makers to reduce carbon emissions.
He said: “The current opportunity is being driven by car makers looking at ways to comply with the European directive to reduce carbon emissions across their product range to 95gms by 2020.
“Every company has to adhere to these very strict directives or risk being fined huge sums if they don’t comply.
Most Read
“One answer is to make the vehicles lighter akin to the technologies being used in Formula One and aerospace. However, this has only ever been done in low volumes and can be a drawn out process – the real technology challenge is to find a way of improving the cycle time and ensuring it is suitable for mass production.”
Penso carries out concept design, feasibility analysis, advanced composite and niche production work.
The firm saw sales rise after coming up with a solution to new carbon efficiency guidelines by developing a process for producing carbon fibre components that offer the same, if not better, performance than their existing counterparts.
This process has reduced manufacturing times to a matter minutes, making the use of composite materials competitive against the traditional steels, aluminium and mixed materials commonly used in the automotive sector.
As part of its growth, Penso has invested £6.5 million in developing its existing building and installing a new carbon fibre high volume factory, a new plant for lightweight structures and machining centres for rapid tooling.
Using financial support from AMSCI and Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP), it has also built a second engineering centre in Coventry and this will house the company’s niche vehicle build centre of excellence.
Mr Collins said: “2014 was a major period of expansion for everyone at Penso and the two years look equally exciting.
“We have opened two new facilities this year and increased our headcount to meet the demand for our services and lightweight composites. There will also be some movement on our first international operation and we have already pencilled in a major appearance at the JEC Composites Show in March 2015.”