The investment will target all areas of the plant, from manufacturing to R&D to logistics, and comes less than a year after new offices were built on the site.
Richard Halhead, managing director of FUCHS Lubricants UK called the investment “a hugely significant project, which will have fantastic benefits for the business.”
“It will elevate FUCHS Lubricants to a unique position as the only lubricant manufacturer in the UK with this type of facility, firmly placing us at the forefront in the R&D, manufacture and distribution of lubricants in the UK and maintains our pledge to continually build for the future,” he continued.
“It all means we are perfectly placed to fulfil the future lubricant production needs of all our customers across a vast range of sectors.”
A new warehouse, capable of holding 4,000 pallet locations, will allow FUCHS to significantly increase its capacity for raw materials, while also allowing an existing building to become a specialist packaging warehouse. Investment has also been made into automation technology, with a FANUC four-axis robot arm installed to simultaneously palletise boxes from three filling lines, packing into 15 different box configurations.
As well as investing in its Stoke manufacturing base, FUCHS has also upgraded its depot at Dareham in East Anglia. Through the remainder of 2018, the company is also looking to install a second robot arm, investigate driverless forklift trucks and numerous other automation upgrades to production lines.
“Our ambitious aim is to produce the most modern lubricants blending plant in the UK,” concluded Halhead. “We feel this significant expenditure in our infrastructure will put us well on the road to achieving that.”
