Mark McManus, managing director, Stiebel Eltron UK
The renewable heating manufacturer has also acquired another premises at its headquarters in Bromborough, doubling its capacity to accommodate the rise in demand for its products.
Stiebel Eltron says the rapid growth it has seen is a result of rising demand for heat pumps, following the Government’s push towards the decarbonisation of the residential and commercial sectors.
The manufacturer has hired five new members of staff as a result, with recruitment almost completed for a further six team members.
Despite supply issues caused by COVID-19, Brexit and the Suez Canal blockage, Steibel Eltron was able to ramp up production to ensure demand was met.
Mark McManus, managing director, said: “We’ve performed exceptionally well over the first six months of this year. Right across the business, we’re seeing a rise in demand for our products – but heat pumps in particular are what’s driving that growth for us.
“Like lots of manufacturers, we’ve faced supply issues. Brexit caused huge delays for us at the start of the year, and we were directly affected by 80 of the 140 ships that were delayed by the Suez Canal blockage.
“But the team at worked extremely hard to make sure we didn’t pass any of those delays onto our customers. We were able to increase production despite wider market challenges and achieved record growth as a result – I’m incredibly proud of my team.”
The new premises in Bromborough will double the storage capacity for the business, while also housing a training room for installers across the industry and a showroom.
Mr McManus added: “Our industry is facing a skills shortage, so our next big focus as a business is to invest in training installers across our market to help address that knowledge gap. The government has laid out ambitious plans to decarbonise homes as part of net zero targets, but without trained installers to carry out improvements, achieving those will be a challenge.
“We already conduct online training sessions, but having a dedicated training room in our new facility in Bromborough means we can increase capacity and frequency of those sessions, so we can do our part in supporting the government in meeting their environmental targets.”