Partner Article

Clayton Glass boosts turnover through Let’s Grow support

Major glazing manufacturer and supplier Clayton Glass has created 18 jobs as a result of moving premises and installing new equipment, with grant support from the Let’s Grow Regional Growth Fund.

Clayton Glass secured a £300,000 grant from Let’s Grow at the end of 2014 and used the money as part of a total £3 million investment to expand the business. The company moved from its Tanfield Lea site to new facilities at the Harelaw Industrial Estate in Stanley.

The grant also helped to pay for new equipment to increase efficiency and capacity at the new site, where Clayton makes sealed glass units for use in windows, doors and conservatories. The business has invested in two new insulating glass lines, two new cutting centres and a furnace used for toughening the products.

Clayton Glass owner and managing director, Ryan Green, said: “We have created 18 extra jobs so far and our target is 38 over three years. We are ahead of the target based on our projections.

“Let’s Grow helped to make the project feasible because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to spend that volume of money in one go. We would have grown but more slowly; this allowed us to do it in one hit and reap the benefits.”

Clayton Glass is the North’s biggest independent Insulated Glass Unit (IGU) supplier and a leading manufacturer of glass for conservatories and doors. It supplies directly to domestic window and conservatory installers and fabricators nationwide, with a core market in the North East.

The company currently employs around 160 people and has a turnover of £15 million, which it is aiming to grow to £25 million in the next three to five years.

Mr Green, who acquired Clayton Glass in 2005, said: “As far as grants go, Let’s Grow was a reasonably straightforward, thorough process and the team was fair and adaptable to our changing circumstances.”

Let’s Grow, which is administered by the BE Group in partnership with UNW and The Journal and Evening Gazette, supports SME growth and job creation in the North East. Aimed towards manufacturing businesses and service sector businesses, grants are available to businesses of all sizes, with higher levels of support available to SMEs.

Neville Bearpark, who leads the UNW grants team, said: “It’s superb to see the expansion and job creation at Clayton Glass as a result of support provided by Let’s Grow.

“This is an ambitious company, which is growing strongly and has a firm plan in place for further expansion. The ongoing job creation by the company is already benefiting the economy here in the North East and it looks like it will continue to do so for a long while yet.”

Andrew Frost from the BE Group said: “Clayton Glass is a family business with huge ambition and its appetite for growth sets a great example for other North East companies to follow.”

UNW was instrumental in setting up the Let’s Grow Fund in 2013 and since then has continued to provide corporate finance support and appraisal of all Let’s Grow applicants.

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