A kitchen manufacturer is aiming to keep ahead of its European rivals thanks to a £150,000 D2N2 grant to help buy new machinery.
Kesseler UK Ltd manufactures high-quality kitchens but had been working at full capacity from its Alfreton base.
The firm has now moved to a much larger factory unit off Lowmoor Road, in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, to allow its £600,000 expansion project to go ahead.
It will see the company purchase state-of-the-art machinery to compete with their European rivals and create nine new jobs by September 2015 – taking the total number of employees to 22.
And it would not have gone ahead so quickly without the firm securing an £150,000 grant from D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership’s Unlocking Investment for Growth programme towards the project, bridging the funding gap.
Kesseler’s commercial director Scott Slater, said: “The success of our business has been founded on the quality of the product we make and our ability to deliver it in a timely, efficient manner.
“We are living proof that a UK kitchen manufacturer can outperform importers in terms of design, quality and service. This investment was a vital step to enable us to bring a great British product to a wider audience, and thereby secure and create permanent skilled jobs for local people.”
Operations director, Ben Slater, said “D2N2’s participation was vital in creating a solid financial footing for this exciting project, and to ensure that we could invest in the level of technology necessary to stay at the cutting edge in a highly competitive market. It has also put us in a strong position to create further skilled positions in the future.”
David Ralph, Chief Executive of D2N2, said: “This significant loan has helped bridge the gap to get this project off the ground, in order to continue to grow the business.
“The company is developing an excellent reputation and this new machinery will create nine jobs in a high-priority area for our grant programme, showing what a real difference it can make.”
D2N2 – the local enterprise partnership for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire – secured £5m from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund, topped up further by the European Regional Development Fund, to help businesses grow through its Unlocking Investment for Growth (UI4G) programme.
Since launching in 2013, the programme has approved £3.2 million in grant funding which will create more than 300 jobs. Further applications at an advanced stage are requesting in excess of £1.6m and expect to create an additional 200 jobs.
But it is a time-bound opportunity, with capital projects having to be completed by March 2015.
The programme will provide a grant in support of capital investment projects with a minimum overall project value of £200,000. In exceptional circumstances up to £500,000 of grant funding is available for projects that can demonstrate real potential to create new jobs.
For more information, go to www.d2n2lep.org/UI4G, or call 01332 826366 or email UI4G@embltd.co.uk
