SOD TURNED ON MAJOR FACTORY EXPANSION

Bright and early on the morning of the 21st of June the diggers rolled in to begin work on Keltech's latest development, a 40,000sq feet expansion to the existing facility. The suitably named K3 extension when completed in December will create a link between the current K1 and K2 buildings bringing Keltech to a combined manufacturing footprint of 160,000sq feet under one roof.

The continued investment at the Waterford city plant has been made in response to growing demand for Keltech’s niche products. Keltech, with a distinguished reputation for service, innovation, and market leadership supplies blue chip OEM clients in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA; from their prime location on the IDA industrial estate.

Keltech; Manufacturing Growth Hackers
The investment will benefit current customers whilst also allowing the business scale further into new markets explains Keltech’s Business Development Director Seamus Lawlor. “When the opportunity came about 3 years ago to purchase the 70,000sq feet of land and buildings adjoining our current 90,000sq feet manufacturing plant it was an opportunity too good to pass on.” The company has experienced positive growth in recent times “In 2014 we employed 70 people, today in spite of COVID and all the challenges faced in the last 12 months we now employ 250 people and growing” says Seamus.

Welding Capacity; Doubled with Automation & Extra Bays.
The development of K3 forms a core part of the companies Towards 2025 strategy. “The layout provides for 2 new state of the art robotic welding center’s, the first of which was ordered last week and will be commissioned over our Christmas shutdown, 2021.” In Tandem to robotic welding there is 30 new welding bays planned, the majority will be production welding bays however a percentage have been dedicated to full time training of recruits partaking in our all new Welding Academy Programme.

“The main aim of K3 is to double our welding capacity. The existing factory has more than ample cutting, folding, painting and final assembly capacity but with recent growth welding was about to become a bottle neck due to space restrictions in that area of the main plant. Once K3 becomes operational, our factory will be capable of doubling sales per year to over €40 million.”

K3 is “Green”
As proud ISO 14001 holders developing K3 as an environmentally friendly building was to the forefront of the agenda. K3 Environmental Hero Highlights: The roof section will be covered in Solar PV. We have increased insulation. A new increased energy efficient compressor. 30 new energy saving welding plants. Heat pump heating system. Fast opening/closing automatic external doors (to reduce Heat loss), Variable speed extraction fans. LED lighting, the list goes on….

Job Opportunities
The company continues to go from strength to strength, over the last 6 months there has been just shy of 150 new hires at Keltech. Seamus concludes “We have become recognised as one of the top suppliers in Europe in our category. We really are proud of the fact that from our Irish facility based in County Waterford we supply 6 of the top 10 construction original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the world… We are renowned for our quality and this has been the corner stone of our recent success. The addition of K3 allows the business continue its positive trajectory and create more top class job opportunities for people here in the South East.”

#WeMakeCoolStuff In Waterford

Enjoyed reading this post or want to find out more? Contact me on seamus.lawlor@keltech.ie or 00353864681333

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