End-of-line machinery specialist Bradman Lake Group has announced that it has obtained planning permission to build a new, multi-million pound manufacturing and office facility in Norwich in the UK which, from later this year, will be home to two of the Group's key machinery brands, Autowrappers and Europack.
Construction of the 50,000 sq ft manufacturing and 10,000 sq ft office facilities, at a greenfield site on Norwich's southern fringes, has just started, and is expected to be completed by July.
The Bradman Lake Group currently has a site at Whiffler Road, Norwich, which manufactures the Autowrappers range of flowwrappers, rollwrappers, and associated product feeding, storage and distribution equipment, all sold worldwide. Also based here are the after-sales departments for both Autowrappers and Europack, Europack's sales and application team, and cross-functional engineering and business development personnel. With the site already sold, all the current Whiffler Road staff will move to the new location in the summer, where they will join the workforce of Europack, a pallet stretchwrapper, case packer, tray erector/loader and robotic palletiser manufacturer currently based in Beccles, Suffolk. Machinery production should start at the new factory very shortly afterwards. It is planned to retain the Beccles site within Group ownership for the time being, although its future has yet to be decided.
Simon Wheatley, Bradman Lake Group ceo, says: “Our recent impressive organisational development will gather additional pace once we move to the new manufacturing centre, which will be designed to be among the most efficient packaging machinery manufacturing sites in Europe. Our drive for integration and technological advancement will be clearly evident.”
Bradman Lake says cross-functional and research teams at the new site will work “in close alignment” with their international colleagues in Germany and the US as well as Bradman Lake brands in Bristol (also home to the Group's headquarters) “to create the next step in packaging integration solutions”.
