Royal opening of new building highlights Renishaw’s continuing investment for growth
Global precision engineering company Renishaw plc is pleased to announce that the Renishaw Innovation Centre has been formally opened by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal, who also presented the company with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category.
The Renishaw Innovation Centre gives the company an additional 153,000 sq ft of space which houses research and development and corporate services staff, as well as demonstration, training and conference facilities. The additional space is also enabling Renishaw’s spectroscopy and laser calibration product lines to relocate to the company’s headquarters site. The space vacated at the Old Town site in Wotton-under-Edge and the Woodchester site, near Stroud will provide further expansion space as the company continues to develop.
It was designed and constructed by two Gloucester-based businesses who are long-standing suppliers to Renishaw, with Roberts Limbrick architects working closely with Barnwood Construction to develop a building that met Renishaw’s current needs, whilst providing for future flexibility. The company was granted planning permission for a 230,000 sq ft building in June 2012 and construction commenced in April 2013. The additional 77,000 sq ft will be constructed as required to meet future growth.
Recognising British innovation
Within the Renishaw Innovation Centre all 40 meeting rooms are named after British innovators, primarily in the fields of science and engineering, but also innovators local to Renishaw’s headquarters site such as Tyndale, Jenner and Pitman. The main conferencing facility is named after UK engineering icon Isambard Kingdom Brunel who was responsible for many iconic structures in the West of England region including the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the ss Great Britain. Other rooms are dedicated to significant innovators including Whittle, Faraday, Lovelace, Haslett, Babbage, Turing, Caxton and Stephenson.
Sir David McMurtry comments: “This excellent new building is a place which we hope inspires people and whilst it is very much focused on the future and helping Renishaw and our customers to achieve ever greater technology breakthroughs, we are also very keen to honour those British innovators who have helped us as a society get to where we are today.”
Presentation of Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2015
As part of her visit to Renishaw, The Princess Royal also presented the company with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2015 in the Innovation category for the development and manufacture of its RESOLUTE™ family of non-contact, optical position feedback devices. RESOLUTE enables a step change in the performance of motion control systems used in manufacturing and other environments.
Suitable for the most demanding applications, RESOLUTE is the world’s first single track fine-pitch optical absolute encoder. It can determine position to a resolution of one nanometre (one billionth of a metre) with motion speeds of up to 100 metres per second for linear position applications and is capable of 32-bit resolution at up to 36,000 rpm for rotary (angle) applications.
Sir David McMurtry, Renishaw’s chairman and chief executive said: “We won our first Queen’s Award in 1979 for Export Achievement, and whilst we have been fortunate to have been recognised a further seventeen times over the years, to receive a Queen’s Award is still very special as they continue to be regarded as the UK’s most prestigious awards for recognising commercial and technological success.”
35 years of continuing development
The then Princess Anne last visited Renishaw in October 1980 when she opened an extension to the company’s first ever commercial premises in Wotton-under-Edge.
At that time Renishaw had just over 100 employees, annual sales of £2 million, all of its employees based at one site, no overseas operations, had just recruited its first apprentice and just won its 2nd Queen’s Award.
Today the company has over 4,000 employees, is forecasting annual sales for the year ended June 2015 of between £480 and £510 million, has 15 offices in the UK and an additional 56 offices in 31 countries, including 12 offices in China, has 114 apprentices in training and this year will also recruit a record 70 young graduates, as well as just being honoured with its 18th Queen’s Award
Renishaw plc
Tel: 01453 524524
Email: uk@renishaw.com
www.renishaw.com