ERIKS makes £500,000 investment in Southampton engineering hub

Specialised industrial service provider ERIKS has invested £500,000 in a new Southampton regional hub as part of multi-million pound infrastructure improvements program in the UK. ERIKS has ploughed funding into the 1,800m² purpose-built hub on Adanac Drive, designed to support the company’s strong customer base across manufacturing sectors in the South and South West of England.

The regional hub replaces two smaller outdated facilities in Southampton and brings together core areas of engineering expertise in a central location, as well as a local stockholding of critical parts, allowing ERIKS to further improve the speed, flexibility and scope of its customer services. A wide range of services will be offered including standard repairs and upgrades for pumps, motors and gearboxes.

The work is part of a £21m infrastructure investment by ERIKS split between Maintenance, repair and operation (MRO) product supply headlined by a state-of-the-art fulfilment centre in Oldbury, West Midlands, and the technical engineering side of the business supported by product business units and engineering workshops across the country such as Southampton.

Mike Golds, ERIKS Engineering Services director, said: “We are delighted to have completed this significant investment in our Southampton regional hub as part of our overall programme of improvements across the country. It has been built and designed specially for the needs of our customers in the area, particularly for critical applications in the water, food, oil and gas and petrochemical sectors.

“The building incorporates an extensive workshop space, allowing us to enhance our offering and focus on servicing, standard repairs and upgrades of pump, motor and geared drive equipment, as well as providing a base for ERIKS site services teams. It also offers a more practical, brighter environment for our colleagues while there are also meetings rooms that are available for use by customers for off-site conferences and training workshops.”

Mike said having a central location for engineering, reliability and product distribution teams would improve knowledge sharing and skills development, especially for younger or newer members of the team.

“Crucially, for our customers it means we’re able to bring the same exceptional levels of skill and experience to each contract, while equipping our teams with greater resources and back-up,” he said. This will allow us to take on a much wider range of work and to complete standard repair tasks even faster and more efficiently, ultimately leading to business growth in the area and new job opportunities.”

The Southampton regional hub includes a dedicated bay and wash-down trap with segregated clean and dirty areas for machine preparation, heavy-lift cranes with a capacity of up to 10 tonnes, advanced test and diagnostic systems, repair workstations, spray booths and curing oven, as well as final assembly and inspection areas.

ERIKS is a specialised industrial service provider that offers a wide range of mechanical and electrical engineering, repair and reliability services. The largest single element of the £21m investment has been spent on the Fulfilment Centre of Expertise (FCE) in Oldbury, to vastly improve product range along with the speed and accuracy of supply. This facility is now fully open and operational and includes a huge 11,000m² warehouse space backed by one of the most advanced warehouse management systems anywhere in Europe.

It has 21 vertical lifts, more than 400m of high-speed conveyors, sophisticated scanning and weighing systems for every order and robust Industry 4.0 configured IT infrastructure with real-time monitoring.

Mike added: “We are passionate about the success of UK manufacturing and this multi-million pound investment means we are ready to set new standards for our customers and sector through our unique combination of skills, knowledge and infrastructure.”