Manufacturing specialist PP Control & Automation (PP C&A) has secured £20 million of orders as it expands into the energy market amid a major programme of investment in the UK’s electricity grid.
The Cheslyn Hay firm is working with civil and structural engineering partners to make protection and control panels, SCADA and RTU systems, LVAC and DC battery charger panels, switchgear controls and decentralised energy and storage.
The £20 million order book comes as the UK electricity grid enters a major period of expansion and modernisation, with more than £77 billion being invested by Ofgem, National Grid, SP Energy Networks and SSEN Transmissions on electricity transmission projects, new major substations and hundreds of kilometres of upgraded or replaced lines.
PP C&A said the scale and unpredictability of the investment programme was creating demand for manufacturers able to provide additional production capacity when project teams come under pressure.
Richard Spears, Industrial Markets Specialist at PP C&A, said: “Our approach is intended to reduce unnecessary handovers, improve buildability and give project teams access to scalable manufacturing capacity when internal or incumbent resources are under pressure.
“It also allows engineering and manufacturing activities to progress in parallel, helping reduce delays without compromising the quality and compliance expected from critical infrastructure.
“The grid upgrade represents an enormous opportunity for the energy sector and the wider UK economy, but investment targets will ultimately be judged by what is successfully built and connected. That’s where we aim to come into our own and it appears the market is responding to our expertise, with £20 million of energy projects currently underway at PP C&A.”
The company employs over 200 people at its Landywood Green facility and is a strategic outsourcing partner for many of the world’s leading machine builders and OEMs.
Richard added: “Expanding permanent internal capacity may be expensive, slow and difficult to justify where project volumes fluctuate. Spreading work across multiple smaller suppliers can add interfaces, inconsistency and coordination risk.
“A more resilient model is to develop long-term relationships with manufacturing partners that can add scalable capacity around the core project team. It is this positioning that has secured PP C&A a considerable share of energy sector work and it is growing.”
