Celebrations are underway at Tees Components in East Cleveland, following the formal opening of their new South East Extension and marking the completion of a £1.5m investment programme.
The whole team at the North Skelton heavy engineering company was thrilled to welcome His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester, to formally open their new building. His Royal Highness was accompanied by Mrs Jo Ropner, Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, who were given a tour of the precision CNC machining facility and apprentice training building, and a demonstration of the company’s own product, the Tees White Gill thruster.
Managing Director Sharon Lane said, “It has been an honour to host His Royal Highness today, and to be able to demonstrate the expertise, skills, and cutting-edge technology we have here at Tees Components. We are delighted to reach this stage in our growth on the 60th anniversary of our business. Our new building provides spacious and modern office, cafeteria, and welfare facilities to our staff, with a wonderful outdoor space that leads into our wildflower footpath and takes us into the heart of Redcar and Cleveland’s natural environment”.
The building is only one of several major investments undertaken over the last year, as the company bounced back from the Covid years and launched an expansion of its subcontract engineering services, in addition to doubling the size of its apprentice training facility and upgrading equipment with new control systems, and installation of solar panels. Sharon explained, “We were badly affected by the pandemic, but we spent the time thinking about our ambitions for the business and planning how we could make them happen once it was over. We now have several new services to offer our clients – who are mainly in the defence and energy sectors – as well as more places for apprentices to train. Even better, we are more resilient to energy volatility now that we have invested in renewables on our site”.
Tees Components was established in 1963, and moved into the former ironstone mine in North Skelton in 1965 after the pit’s closure. It employs 60 local people and has just completed recruitment of a further 4 apprentices to add to its existing numbers. Its specialism is very large, precision machining, but it also undertakes complete supply of assemblies. The company is also the OEM for Tees White Gill Thrusters, which is exported to five continents and counts among its clients NERC (National Environment Research Council) and NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration).
On his visit, His Royal Highness was shown a complete unit ready to be shipped to the United States, which was designed, manufactured, assembled and tested all from the company’s North Skelton site.