Sector Focus – MANUFACTURING – Knowsley manufacturers who are driving the economy

Manufacturing is one of the key pillars of the Liverpool city region economy, employing 50,000 people across 3,000 businesses and offering an annual GVA contribution of £4bn.

It is home to some of the biggest global names in the sector, including Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Magna, Unilever, Pilkington, Ineos, AstraZeneca and Cammell Laird. From automotive to shipbuilding, from chemicals to pharmaceuticals, the region has many industry leaders.

This is supported by world class infrastructure and support. This includes the Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC), a University of Liverpool initiative. Its virtual design and manufacture capabilities use the latest specialist 3D visualisation and simulation allowing organisations to explore their designs and optimise manufacturing processes.

Sci-Tech Daresbury is home to the Hartree Centre which houses the most powerful supercomputer in the UK and Sensor City, a collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, enables industry and academic partners to translate their innovative sensor concepts into commercially viable products.

Knowsley has long been an industrial powerhouse. And, in March, automotive giant Ford gave the borough a massive vote of confidence by taking back full control of the transmission plant at Halewood with exciting plans for the future

(Read our interview with Plant Manager, Andy Roche).

Figures from Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership reveal that, since 2009, the number of advanced manufacturing jobs in the borough had increased by 28% since 2009 – five times the rate across the UK. Knowsley is well established as a major industrial hub and below are just three of the many companies powering the sector:

Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in Halewood is the UK’s largest car manufacturer, and its Merseyside operations sits on a 300-acre site

The factory employs 3,700 people directly, supporting a further 1,000 people indirectly through its suppliers and contractors. JLR Halewood produces the award-winning Range Rover Evoque and the Land Rover Discovery Sport, which includes plug-in and hybrid models.

Earlier this year, as part of Jaguar Land Rover’s new global Reimagine strategy, the company announced Halewood and all its other factories would be converted to produce electric-only cars, over the next few years. This follows a £22.5bn investment, as the company drives forward with the complete electrification of its Jaguar and Land Rover brands, by 2039.

The Halewood factory has one of the most fascinating, resurgent manufacturing stories in the UK for a generation where production and workforce has effectively trebled since 2011- when it launched the Range Rover Evoque.

More than £750m has been invested in infrastructure at Halewood in recent years, including: £250m for its Range Rover Evoque, the fastest selling Land Rover model of all time and £200m for the Discovery Sport. During this time, Jaguar Land Rover Halewood has also seen the installation of two £60m state-of-the-art servo press lines, over 300 new robots and over an acre of new building space, car parks and employee facilities.

Trevor Leeks, plant director at Halewood, said: “We are proud to have our Merseyside manufacturing roots in Knowsley and of the contributions our business makes, not only to the local economy but also to the wider UK economy through our UK supplier contracts.

We are passionate about investing in home grown talent and approximately a third of the workforce – around 1200-employees- live in Knowsley.”

Trevor added: “The announcement of the company’s new Reimagine strategy, which will see the complete electrification of the Jaguar and Land Rover brands by 2039, promises continued investment in our factory- so there is a bright and exciting future ahead for Halewood and the Knowsley region.”

Algal Omega 3

Many of us are aware of the health benefits of omega 3 oil through TV ad

campaigns for various food and vitamin products, particularly when it comes to cardiovascular, eye and cognitive health.

There is also some degree of awareness that omega 3 is extracted from fish. This has created a growing environmental problem as the process of extraction requires large quantities of fish to be harvested every year to meet rising demand.

However, the Algal Omega 3 factory in Prescot offers a much more sustainable alternative. It currently employs 36 people and aims to push that number above 40 later in the year. It has been in Knowsley since 1979 and has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years.

In 2019 it scooped the ‘Excellence in Manufacturing’ Award at Knowsley Business Awards after increasing production by an astonishing 800% over the previous five years. One of the investors in the business is Mara Renewables Corporation in Canada, a leading R&D specialist in natural algal biotechnologies.

Algal Omega 3 general manager, Chris Denson, explained how it is helping to make the supply of omega 3 oil much more sustainable. He said: “People might be aware that omega 3 is usually extracted from fish but in actual fact the fish is just the middle man.

“The oil is actually produced by algae and the fish eat the algae, hence why it is extracted from the fish. We cut out that middle man and harvest the oil directly from the algae. Here at Prescot, we ferment the algae and recover the oil using a solvent-free extraction process.”

Once Chris and his team have extracted the unrefined oil it is packed into drums and transported to other facilities where it is further refined before being used in a myriad of food, beverage and nutraceutical products. It also appears in indirect food chain products such as chicken feed.

Like most businesses, Algal Omega 3 was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but not to a huge extent. Chris added: “During the first lockdown in 2020 we furloughed a number of staff from March until May with those people who could work from home continuing to work from home.

“But, touch wood, since we came back last May we haven’t had any problems. We have a relatively big space and a small team so implementing social distancing measures hasn’t been a problem.

“In fact, given the growing demand for health-related products during the past 12 months we have become even busier and are evaluating options to grow further in the future”

Webber NW

Webber NW was started in 2011 by brothers Stephen and Jamie Griffin and during that decade has established a UK-wide reputation for the quality of its design, fabrication and installation work.

Based in Kirkby, the business is one of the fastest-growing of its kind in the North West. Working with both construction companies and manufacturers, it specialises in structural steelwork, secondary steelworks, bespoke steelworks, glass balustrade systems, pipework installations and construction projects.

Fabrication takes place at its Knowsley plant and people from its 45-strong team work all over the country on installations. Stephen Griffin said: “We currently have people working in Lincolnshire and on the O2 Arena in London.”

However, similar to many businesses, Webber NW took a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. Stephen added: “I would say our turnover has fallen by around 40% over the past year. Many of our customers put jobs on hold during lockdowns.

“We had one job worth £300,000 and that still hasn’t started up again. We also do work for Jaguar Land Rover at Halewood and they have been affected by the pandemic and that has had a knock-on effect for us.”

Despite the setback, with the country now gradually opening up again thanks to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, Stephen is now optimistic for the coming months. He said: “There are signs of a recovery. It looks like the construction sector is really going to take off so we are hopeful business will start to get back to some form of normality.”

Behind the Doors - Rösler UK offers a masterclass in Brexit planning

If you were looking at the impact of Brexit on business in the UK, German company Rösler, and its Knowsley-based subsidiary Rösler UK, offers a textbook case study.

It regularly moves industrial equipment and consumables between mainland Europe and the UK, as well as to the rest of the world, and is a useful bellwether in assessing how difficult or easy it is to operate in a post-Brexit world.

A third generation family business, Rösler can trace its roots back to 1933 when Richard Stephan Rösler founded a porcelain company in Dessendorf. Today it specialises in mass finishing and shot blasting technology, particularly for customers in the automotive, aerospace and medical equipment sectors. The group had a pre-pandemic turnover of around €300m a year.

Mass finishing or shot blasting is an industrial process which focuses on the surface finishing of plastic or metal parts. The aim can be aesthetic, to create a clean and polished exterior, but is also often critical to the safe and efficient working of machinery and components.

Rösler, which has a strong presence in all of Europe and operates across the world, employs ca. 1,800 people in places as far afield as the US, India, China, Brazil and Russia. It manufactures and supplies polishing and blasting equipment. The machinery can be off-the-shelf and also bespoke for the specific requirements of the customer.

In the UK, Rösler also provides a sub-contracting service to all kinds of industries, the majority of which comes from the automotive manufacturing sector. Customers can send their components to the company’s premises in Knowsley to be finished by our in-house experts.

Daniel Tweer is the German-born managing director of Rösler UK. He spent 7 years running the company’s China operation before he and his family relocated to the Liverpool city region in late 2019. He and his family are now settled on Merseyside. He added: “This is a beautiful country and so many people have been so friendly and helpful to us since we arrived.”

He had only been here a few months when ‘business as usual’ went out of the window thanks to the twin arrivals of the new trade agreement between the UK and the EU and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So far, I think, the main impact of Brexit for us has been on the transfer of goods from Europe to the UK,” said Daniel, who manages a team of 30 people in Knowsley, including sales people, admin staff, process development engineers and a team of five service engineers.

“We import most of our machinery from Germany (with specialised systems for the aerospace industry from our branch in France) for our UK and Irish customers and initially we did see significant delays in the movement of our equipment. However, things are improving now and we are steadily getting there.”

Key to navigating this difficult period, explained Daniel, was advanced preparation and the knowledge and experience of Rösler’s team in Germany. He added: “Our team in Germany has a long established process in place for moving equipment all over the world and that really helped us following the trade agreement.

“In addition, we increased our inventory in advance over here in the UK to make sure we had enough stock, in particular in regards to consumables and spares. We also kept in touch with our customers for a long time before Brexit to make sure they were aware of what was happening and what arrangements we had in place. We are not quite there yet but it is improving.”

COVID-19, of course, was an event few outside the world of epidemiology saw coming. Companies had to adapt quickly when lockdowns and restrictions on the movement of people and goods came into force across multiple jurisdictions.

“I think our experience of the pandemic has been similar to that of many businesses across the UK,” said Daniel. “For a period of time we did see our revenues fall quite significantly. The only part of the business that held up during that time was the sub-contracting side.

“We found during the pandemic we had more customers wanting to send their production parts to us to be surface-finished by our own engineers after they had put their own staff on furlough. Despite restrictions now easing we are expecting that trend to continue.

“A number of our staff were also put on furlough although other members of our team, particularly the sub-contracting and sales engineers continued to work full time. We have continued to keep in constant touch with our customers over the past 12 months which enabled us to support our customers as they resume their normal activities.

Daniel says he is “cautious but optimistic” that we as Rösler UK will be back to normal operation by around July.”

And he is more than confident about the future of Rösler UK. “During the quieter time in the pandemic we have been upgrading the equipment we use for our clients in the aerospace sector.

“We also worked on upgrading our quality system and received the AS 9100D certification which allows us to support customers from the aerospace industry specifically with subcontract finishing. That had been quite a significant investment for us. Our customers are now more positive about where they are so I am optimistic about our growth in the coming months.”

He added: “We are now also doing a lot related to 3D printing and finishing 3D printed parts and digitalization of surface finishing processes. I think that will be a big growth area over the next couple of years.

“We recently opened an AM test centre in Knowsley with our own AM Solutions machines and those from our partner companies that are able to treat and finish additive manufactured parts.

“Our customers are now more positive about where they are so I am optimistic about our growth in the coming months and years.”

Rösler UK