The Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, one of the leading UK providers of vocational air conditioning and refrigeration training, is to work with a major new training institute in Saudi Arabia which is determined to base its courses on UK qualifications.
The Zamil Industrial Training Institute (ZITI) will work with the Grimsby Institute to develop UK-based, Edexcel-approved vocational training, notably programmes in refrigeration and air conditioning, welding and fabrication, production, instrumentation and control and electrical and electronics technologies.
The £8m Zamil Institute, due to open early next year, is being financed by one of Saudi Arabia's leading air conditioning manufacturers Zamil Industrial.
The company's decision to use the UK as a model for its training and qualifications is a considerable feather in the cap for both the quality of UK training and the Grimsby Institute.
Zamil's training centre manager Dr Mohamed Sharif told H&V Review's sister magazine ACR News: 'I have personally selected UK training scheme for our training programmes because I am very familiar with many other training schemes and qualifications framework including the German, the Singaporean, the American and the Australian, and strongly believe that the UK scheme is the most suitable one as far as the vocational training is concerned.'