There was an air of celebration and hope in Cheshire in February as George Osborne opened the first new build on the New Cheshire Business Park.
Swan House is the new home to the expanding Cygnet Group of engineering companies which are actively recruiting staff, and on the lookout for new investment projects, even during these tough economic times. Managing Director Matthew Kimpton-Smith showed the Shadow Chancellor around the £2 million, environmentally-friendly building taking him through the 3,500 sq ft of open plan office space and into two workshops totalling 15,000 sq ft.
Firstly he was shown Texkimp’s creels. These fibre unwinding machines are large frameworks designed to feed fibre into various manufacturing processes such as making carpet backing, the innards of tyres and the carbon fibres that go into the panels of the new generation Boeing 787 Dreamliner and new Airbus A350. Texkimp is the bedrock of the Cygnet Group, founded in the 1940s by Matthew’s grandfather William Harry Kimpton, and regenerated as Texkimp Ltd by his parents, Colin and Janet Smith, in the early 1970s. Colin and Janet still work for the company and today Texkimp proves that some areas of UK engineering manufacturing are still alive and well – the creels are 99% UK manufactured and 99% exported to almost every continent of the world.
In the second workshop George Osborne will then encounter one of Cygnet’s new ventures, SECC with its impressive threadless pipe joining technology. On display will be their new oil and gas pipe coupling designed to protect the environment by preventing spillage in the event of a pipeline break in the harsh sub-sea and marine world. This idea has been developed from the inventive mind of a Manchester University lab technician, Matthew Readman, and then incubated and grown through the collective decades of experience in the Cygnet team of engineers, to a commercially viable product that’s now attracting orders from around the globe.
Matthew Kimpton-Smith called George Osborne to strip away the red tape that strangles small businesses and to develop policies that make it easier, not harder, for small firms to grow and employ even more local people.
The full compliment of almost 50 staff members shared in a toast along with some further 45 guests, invited because of their contribution to the success to date of the Cygnet Group of companies. Betty Kimpton, 92 year old widow of the original founder was a guest of honour, alongside George Osborne who will present a plaque to mark the official opening.
Notes: It took three years to find the site and 18 months to design and build the £2 million, 18,500 sq ft Swan House. The New Cheshire Business Park will eventually boast some 250,000 sq ft of factory, warehouse and office units in Wincham, near Northwich, Cheshire, close to the M6, M56 and Daresbury Science and Technology Facilities Council. Many of the buildings from 1891 have already been restored as part of the regeneration of the New Cheshire Salt Works, and some already house other businesses which are also recruiting locally.