- By admin
- In All Categories
WAVE OF NEW JOBS AND WORKERS FURLOUGHED AT LARGE TEES ENGINEERING FIRM
It’s back to business for Wilton Universal Group as production continues ‘at a pace’
A Teesside engineering firm has taken on large numbers of workers and non furloughed staff to keep up with production throughout the coronavirus outbreak.
Wilton Universal Group has hired 60 new staff to work on its orders as production continues “at a pace” at its Port Clarence yard.
Around 80% of its universal coatings staff were furloughed due to the pandemic.
But most of them have been brought back to work in the last two weeks, with only a handful remaining on leave.
And CEO Bill Scott has praised the workforce for how they have dealt with the challenges of the last few months.
He said: “We have maintained operations as much as possible throughout this period with the safety of our people being the overriding priority.
“The majority of our office team are still working remotely, but production is continuing at a pace.
“In fact, we have taken on an additional 57 people to help deliver our order-book of projects.
“As we have a large 54 acre site and produce very large, complicated structures, we are able to accommodate social distancing within our workshops and wider site areas, however we have also enhanced other hygiene and safety procedures to gold plate what we already have in place.
The Government’s furlough scheme was utilised for some of its Universal Coatings team as they were “working on client sites that needed to implement the correct additional safety procedures”, he added.
“Eighty percent of our Universal Coatings team were initially on furlough,” Bill said, “but we have returned 60% in the last two weeks who are now back working in safe environments both at our site and at our clients’ facilities.
“I have to say that the entire workforce of both Wilton and Universal have been brilliant in adapting to the tasks and they have embraced the processes with a very mature mindset.”
PM Boris Johnson visited the company and met with workers as part of the Tories’ campaign trail late last year.
Wilton Group developed a £3m state-of-the-art coatings facility for offshore wind turbine components in 2018, among its other services.
