News: Royal visit to JELD-WEN

HRH The Earl of Wessex visited JELD-WEN's door manufacturing site in Rotherham last week as part of an official visit to South Yorkshire.

The Earl met with JELD-WEN's managing director Mike Ward and general manager Richard Dolben and was given a tour of the company's new door factory, which has recently created 30 new jobs in the area.

The new factory produces 2,500 boarded and hemlock doors every week and 40,000 other internal doors, which are sold to local authorities, developers and the home improvement market.

The company, on the Sheffield border at Woodhouse Mill, employs around 400 staff in South Yorkshire and an 1,200 strong workforce at a total of four sites across the UK.

On the tour of the modern facility Prince Edward was shown the brand new production line that incorporates paperless tracking via touch screen monitoring, plus a new racking system, both of which optimise manufacturing efficiency.

The company has also invested in an advanced timber preservative treatment plant, where all timber doors will be coated to ensure an enhanced lifespan before being delivered to customers. This ensures that JELD-WEN does not have to rely on outside suppliers to complete this important part of the production process and can therefore be even more responsive to customers.

The new factory layout is compatible with lean management, as part of ensuring JELD-WEN is able to minimise overheads and offset raw material price rises in an effort to provide customers with real value for money.

Mike Ward, managing director of JELD-WEN UK, said: "We are delighted that the Earl of Wessex chose to visit our Sheffield unit to see first hand some of the innovations which are contributing to our success. We introduced him to members of our skilled workforce who play such a vital role in maintaining the consistent high quality of our products."

Last month month, HRH The Countess of Wessex officially opened the Matrix Business Centre in Dinnington and visited Sandvik's European Centre of Excellence (SECoE) at Beighton Link. In July, The Duke of Kent is set to visit the new headquarters for the MTL Group in Brinsworth and Sterecycle in Templeborough, the world's first commercial scale autoclave waste treatment facility.

JELD-WEN website

Images: JELD-WEN