Hardide Coatings, a UK-based provider of advanced surface coating technology, has announced the opening of its new Virginia production facility.
In January 2015 the company commenced an investment of up to US$7 million in Martinsville to expand its production operations to North America. The new facility is expected to create up to 29 jobs over the next three years.
This expansion has been driven by increased demand from North American customers, with sales to the US and Canada more than doubling during 2015. The 26,000sq ft facility in Martinsville-Henry County, will service existing and new customers for the company’s range of tungsten carbide coatings in the oil and gas and flow control markets. In addition, the company also plans to expand in the aerospace and advanced engineering sectors and develop applications for its newly-patented coating for diamonds.
“Having a local production facility in North America will support the increased demand from existing customers and significantly boost opportunities to expand provision of our coatings throughout the region,” said Philip Kirkham, CEO of Hardide. “We have installed two large capacity chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coating reactors and work is already progressing well on some very exciting customer trials.”
The first two senior employees at the facility, Jamey Ewing, coatings supervisor and Barry Farmer, pre-treatment supervisor, spent 12 weeks during the summer in the UK at the company’s head office and main production site in Bicester, Oxfordshire, being trained on the Hardide coating production processes and techniques. They returned to Virginia in September 2015 to assist with the installation and commissioning of the process, production and quality control equipment.
“Production for North American customers, currently being carried out in the UK, will be gradually transferred to Virginia on a case-by-case and phased basis, taking load and capacity of both sites into consideration,” said Kirkham. “We have also invested in an ultra-fast broadband cable between the UK and US sites enabling both facilities to operate on the same fast, secure network.”
Image: Jamey Ewing (L) and Barry Farmer (R)/ Hardide Coatings
Subscribe
