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TDK-Lambda to invest £11.5m in Ilfracombe factory
TDK Corporation has announced an £11.5m investment package to redevelop its TDK-Lambda manufacturing facility in Ilfracombe. The investment, which will be staged over the next three and a half years, will enable the company to increase production capacity by 50%.
The original factory was built over 50 years ago, with further expansion in the mid-1980s. While the company has invested heavily in new equipment and building upgrades over these years, including the addition of a £1m EMC test facility in 2019, the company believe it is now the right time to redevelop the site.
The planned redevelopment will increase manufacturing space, expand its R&D facilities, and radically overhaul and automate the end-to-end material flow – providing further supply chain robustness within the TDK-Lambda manufacturing network, especially for the European market.
TDK Corporation will invest £11.5m to redevelop its TDK-Lambda manufacturing facility in Ilfracombe / Picture: TDK-Lambda
The expansion programme will be split into a four-stage process to ensure continuity of production and services. Stage one will see the construction of new offices, including employee facilities and a health and fitness centre. Upon completion, additional offices will be extended to expand the R&D, product verification & test, and manufacturing engineering facilities.
The link area between the two factory buildings will then be infilled, and smart, lean storage facilities and AGVs for material handling installed. Finally, the manufacturing areas will be reconfigured with designated front end (PCB assembly) and back end (configuration & test) production areas.
Healthcare power supplies from TDK-Lambda are used in critical medical and laboratory applications globally. Geoff Wilby, managing director of TDK-Lambda UK, said: “Since the Covid-19 outbreak, delivery quantities to certain healthcare and bio-diagnostic customers have increased by six to tenfold.”
Among its UK-designed products are the 100W CUS100ME for portable ventilators, the 175W rated NV series for ventilators, the 300W EFE300M for virus detection, the 550W Vega modular power supply for Covid-19 swab testing and the QM5 700W modular power supply for mobile X-ray equipment.