Scottish company expands into Cape Town

SCOTTISH outsourced customer services provider Ascensos has announced plans to create hundreds of jobs through an expansion into South Africa, with the opening of a new operation in Cape Town.

Motherwell-based Ascensos, which employs more than 3,000 people, said its Cape Town operation would create 150 jobs initially and be opened officially later this month. It flagged plans to increase the number of positions in this operation to 600 in its first year, while underlining its commitment to Scotland.

Ascensos noted it had expanded internationally since its 2013 launch with a “network of offices now spanning the Isle of Wight, Bucharest and Istanbul, as well as several bases in Scotland”.

The business last month announced its creation of 100 jobs with the opening of a Stranraer base, as part of plans to recruit

500 people for six new “local hubs” in the UK. A spokeswoman noted then that the business, which has B&Q, KFC and Peloton as clients, could not say at that stage how many of the other new hubs would be in Scotland. Ascensos said the local hubs would “bring high-quality digital jobs to rural communities, with staff working mainly from home”.

John Devlin, chief executive and co-founder of Ascensos, said: “Cape Town is a premier location with a fantastic talent pool and it’s a wellestablished market for English-speaking service delivery. This is a great opportunity to create a large number of highquality jobs and we are looking forward to building on new business opportunities in the region while servicing our existing client base, which includes some of the world’s best-known brands, from this new location.”

He added: “This... milestone perfectly illustrates our ‘born local, grown global’ approach. We remain utterly committed to our roots in Scotland, while continuing to expand globally and create jobs at scale in order to provide a fantastic service to our international network of clients.”