OGM invests £5.5m for growth in Wales

OGM, a UK plastic injection moulder, headquartered in Oxford, has invested £5.5m in the site purchase, modernisation and expansion of its Hengoed site in Wales.

The investment involves upgrading the power to a 1250kVa HV supply, the installation of new chilled water and compressed air systems, the purchase of multiple new moulding machines and robots and the building of a 600sqm new warehouse.

The modernisation and expansion programme has been undertaken to complement OGM’s technologically advanced facility in Oxford.

OGM group managing director, Paul Wightman, said “We’ve been planning to invest heavily in Wales, at the Hengoed plant, since we acquired it in 2018 so that both OGM sites can operate together to serve group customers. The investment is already generating substantial new business with recent wins from new and existing customers.”

To increase capacity, the Hengoed site has been completely remodelled. OGM has installed new fully automated cells with three new plastic injection moulding machines (1100, 650 and 350 tonne), robots, ancillary equipment and pipework, in addition to a new £120,000 Frigosystem chiller system. The £400,000 new warehouse unit is currently being built which will increase finished goods space significantly and the assembly area has also been moved to make space for a 400 tonne machine from Oxford.

Engineers at OGM have also designed and developed a sophisticated automated assembly system to complement an existing manual assembly operation that will deliver a 30% gain in efficiency and enable skilled staff to be redeployed elsewhere in the factory. Further improvements will be achieved from the reconfiguration of the entire factory to improve flow of goods in and goods out.

Wightman concludes “We’ll be investing further at OGM Wales over the next 12 months. A new toolroom will be built which will be 50% larger than the existing one at over 200sqm of floor area and we are installing a new crane and additional toolroom equipment for support, repairs and maintenance. We have also expanded the team with four new roles; a toolmaker, a quality engineer and two apprentices from local college, Coleg Y Cymoedd.