Mira to invest £300m at its Midlands site
Vehicle engineering and test organisation will create 2,000 jobs over the next decade
- Published in News.
Time to thrive
Turnover is expected to grow from £37m in 2010 to £100m by 2020
Vehicle engineering and test organisation Mira is to invest £300 million at its Midlands base over the next 10 years to support an aggressive drive into new countries and new market sectors.
The investment will see the construction of a 43,000sqm advanced engineering centre at its current site in Nuneaton, allowing it to expand its range of design engineering, computer simulation, test and validation and certification services. It will also expand its adjacent technology park which is currently at 98% capacity.
Mira said the company would grow from having a £37 million turnover in 2010 to £100 million by 2020. It plans to create 2,000 jobs during that period, many requiring specialist engineering skills.
George Gillespie, Mira’s chief executive, said the organisation had performed strongly during the recession and now wanted to become a truly global player. “The potential has always been there,” he said. “But during the past couple of years the success of the business has pushed us towards making this huge investment. The technology park, for instance, is virtually full: we simply have to expand.”
Mira has identified low-carbon vehicles, intelligent mobility and defence as potential boom areas for its range of engineering services. Gillespie said that he saw huge potential for expanding overseas, with export markets serviced by the Nuneaton facility. “We will be looking to gain a significant foothold in China, India, Korea, Brazil, Japan and the US, enabling us to feed work back home. British engineering is still held in high regard around the world and we have the intellectual horsepower to help customers based in these overseas markets.”
In 2010 Mira recruited 70 new staff and its continued growth in the UK alone is expected to generate more than 400 jobs over a 10 year period and another 1,500 in the supply chain. It has also established a thriving apprenticeship scheme, which Gillespie said was designed to nurture engineering skills at a grassroots level. “Skill shortages are a long-term problem and we want to do our bit to alleviate them,” he said.