Jobs unveiled in firm’s five-year plan for growth

A DUNDEE turbine components firm has unveiled plans to quadruple its turnover and take on almost 100 additional staff over the next five years.

ATL Turbine Services, based at Baldovie Industrial Estate, faced huge difficulties when a long-term order to supply parts for the Tornado aircraft stopped in 2015.

It led to around 20 jobs being lost at the Dundee site and a four day working week being implemented.

However, under the watch of engineering i ndustry veteran Kerr Picken, who joined as CEO in February 2016, the company has undergone a successful turnaround.

The firm f ocuses on inspecting and repairing turbine parts, which involves a variety of highly skilled and specialist processes.

Operations director Dale Harris, who joined last year, said: “There’s no doubt the business went through a difficult time. Since then Kerr came in and has done an excellent job at building up the business again.

“We’ve now got a much greater diversity of clients — probably about 50:50 between industrial and aero — and t he company i s growing again.”

The firm’s latest accounts for the year ending June 30 2017 show a £146,511 profit on £5 million sales.

Exports are an increasingly important part of sales — rising from £227,000 in 2015 to £297,000 in 2016 and to £1.25m last year.

ATL has plans to grow its turnover to £20m by the year 2022, which would mean the workforce growing from 70 to around 160.

It can take the firm up to six months to train staff for some of its specialist jobs.

The firm has joined the Government-backed Sharing i n Growth programme with the aim of increasing productivity.