New structure signals bright future for industry in county
IF you have driven through Gloucester Business Park in Brockworth, you would have seen a gigantic new structure that is being built there.
The metal frames are now in place and a huge area of land near Coopers Edge has been flattened with builders and engineers hard at work.
The site in Hurricane Road is next to Laithwaites Wine on the Gloucester Business Park, just south of the Tesco Extra supermarket, Premier Inn and Costa Coffee.
The building work is all for the expansion of G-tem which is building a new factory, on the opposite side of the road to the firm’s existing base.
G-tem is an engineering and manufacturing firm that has had its headquarters at Gloucester Business Park for 20 years.
The company manufactures high quality automotive pressings and subassemblies and the new factory will provide an extra 120,000 sq ft of space with room for future expansion.
It will lead to the creation of an extra 150 jobs to add to the 500 already employed by the firm.
A spokesman for SFP Planning said: “This approval represents a real vote of confidence for the manufacturing industry in Gloucestershire, which is very much alive and well.”
And it could have new neighbours in the not-to-distant future
Because Dowty Propellers hopes to build a new factory after fire gutted its Staverton base in 2015 on nearby land, also off Hurricane Road.
The company’s headquarters and blade manufacturing facility was devastated in the blaze three years ago.
A planning application lodged with Tewkesbury Borough Council showed that the new factory would be built near the expanded G-tem factory.
The company, which then had 340 workers in the Gloucester area, said it expected that the new facility would be operational in 2019. The business park site it is building its factory on was used by the Gloster Aircraft Company until it closed in 1969.
Speaking last July, Dowty Propellers’ president Oliver Towers said: “We are delighted to be continuing our long history with the Gloucester area.
“The decision to stay in this area was driven by the capabilities and commitment of our workforce that stretches back over 80 years,” Dowty’s Mr Towers added. philip.norris@reachplc.com
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