Jonathan Fry: New Life for Longbridge North Works

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The famous North Works factory at Longbridge is set to become the world's leading producer of light weight automotive composite body shells, components and structures thanks to a pioneering investment by the UK's leading high tech composite firm, epm:technology group.

This welcome injection of fresh life for Longbridge will see the site converted into a world leading, high-tech manufacturing & assembly centre potentially employing up to 450 people, with a workforce of 150 in place by the end of next year. Production lines are scheduled to start operations in February 2006.

The North Works is owned by regional development agency Advantage West Midlands which has agreed to lease the site to epm:technology. Work on the first phase of Longbridge Technology Park started last week.

"The 100,000 sq ft Longbridge site will enable us to meet the growing expectations of automotive customers worldwide who are increasingly turning to composite materials as an effective way to reduce the weight of their vehicles, improve fuel economy and meet environmental targets," said Graham Mulholland, epm:technology group managing director.

"This investment, which is one of the largest automotive composite projects to ever be undertaken by a private company, will help to hasten a new dawn for Longbridge, generating new business, deploying the very latest technology and creating new jobs for the area," he added.

Advantage West Midlands Chief Executive John Edwards said: ?This is absolutely fantastic news not just for Northfield but for the region as a whole.

"Companies such as epm:technology are exactly the sort we want to attract to this part of the region and we are delighted to have been able to agree the deal on the North Works."

The epm:technology group Longbridge factory will see vehicle body systems start as raw materials and finish the manufacturing process as painted, fully bonded assemblies and structures ready for assembly at the manufacturer. As well as many F1 motorsport teams including current world champions Renault, epm:technology group count TVR, Lotus, Marcos, Bentley, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and the bus manufacturer Optare amongst their customers.

epm:technology group are one of the UK's fastest growing high performance composite engineering firms and in nine years have grown from a one man band to a �4.5 million per annum turnover company employing 130 people at two sites in the East Midlands.

Already widely recognised as leaders in the automotive composite structure sector, the expansion at Longbridge will give the company a new global manufacturing base without disrupting any of the company's existing production facilities.

Research Material:

epm:technology group was started by current managing director, Graham Mulholland in 1996.
As part of an ambitious growth plan, the company acquired Astec, the composite arm of TWR, in November 2002.
Longbridge is the third of epm's facilities joining the Technical Centre at Draycott and the 40,000 sq ft Production Centre in Coalville, Leicestershire.
epm:technology group's investment in Longbridge is backed by Advantage West Midlands with the Regional Development Agency helping to develop a number of incubator units around the factory as part of the first phase of Longbridge Technology Park.
Advantage West Midlands purchased 57 acres of land from MG Rover in 2003 comprising the former South Works, North Works and North Works car park.
Graham Mulholland is 31, married and first became interested in composites through a love of canoe slalom which he performed to international standard.