Jobs boost for Newtown with £1.5 million investment in new factory

The RMGroup, which designs and manufactures robotic packaging machinery, has recently won two new contracts to design and install handling and packaging systems for companies in the food sector, as well as a major contract in India.

The business, founded by director Edward Rees in 1995, currently has a 37,000 sq ft factory on the Mochdre Industrial Estate in Newtown.

The Welsh Assembly has put £300,000 towards the expansion.

The new contracts has already seen eight new jobs created and now another 17 workers will be taken on. It has also safeguarded the jobs of 24 staff members.

Mr Rees said: "Acquiring a larger unit was crucial for our growth and as soon as we knew we had support from the Welsh Government we were able to take on more projects. It is an exciting time, with a lot of opportunities out there now that we have this additional capacity.

"The new unit will enable us to increase production, bring some work in-house that is currently outsourced, allow us to develop some new systems and refurbish and re-programme more used packaging machinery which is a growing market.

"We want to recruit more people with the right skills and I have been talking to local colleges about our skills requirements.

"Our engineers are highly skilled and we invest a lot of time training them to deal with the complexities of manufacturing such a wide range of bespoke sophisticated systems with each machine tailored to the individual needs of our customers."

Economy Minister Edwina Hart added: "It's really good news to hear how this company is already reaping the benefits of investing in a new facility and winning new business and creating jobs and I am delighted Welsh Government support enabled this to go ahead."

The group has four divisions – machinery sales – including refurbished equipment, servicing and parts, machinery hire and contract packaging.

It was the first company to design and make a fully automated mobile packaging system to bag products at source, cutting the time cost and carbon footprint of companies. These are now sold in the UK and Europe and used to carry out contract packaging.

The group currently supply packaging machinery to the aggregate, coal, salt and animal feed industries and making in-roads into the food sector.