Deritend brings forward plant closure and moves gearbox production to new facility

Deritend managing director Richard Hale said there was no doubt that the company would have taken longer about reducing activity at the older site had market conditions permitted but the recessionary climate meant bringing forward the closure plans. He said “many of the staff including our engineering apprentices” would move to the new facility but there would be “a small number” of redundancies. The new facility will house smaller gearbox work for the West Midlands area as well as the large rotating machines business established there early last year. Deritend has 14 other workshops across the UK. Operations director, Alex Meiklejohn said: “The industries we serve are predominantly 24-hour operations, from power stations, to water processing plants, hospitals, petrochemical sites and some of the larger food producers. It makes sense for us to concentrate our operations on the most up-to-date and modern facilities in each area. Deritend has effectively been doubling-up with the maintenance of the former RMB Engineering works, also in West Bromwich. The proposal for this older facility is that it will now be closed in-line with our plans for business development and a balanced geographical coverage.”