Work has begun on LDD’s new, state of the art, BREEAM “Excellent” rated facility in Tolvaddon. This has been made possible through the combined efforts of private sector investment and support from the European Regional Development Fund under the Convergence Programme.
The new premises at Tolvaddon Energy Park, Pool, in the heart of Cornwall, will provide over 2,000 sqm of high quality, sustainable office and factory premises, safeguarding existing high value employment and local supply chains which support us and creating a number of new, skilled jobs.
LDD recently completed drilling work on monopile foundations for RWE Innogy’s Gwynt y Môr Offshore Wind Farm. The company used one of the world’s largest reverse circulation drill rigs, the LD5000, to carry out the work.
Jason Clark ACSM, Founder and Managing Director of LDD Ltd said: “ We have strong plans for the continued expansion of our business including creation of new (LDD group) businesses spinning out from LDD. Outgrowing our existing rented premises, we have been looking for suitable high quality office and workshop space for some time. When the option arose to expand at Tolvaddon we saw this as a good opportunity for us. It was very important for us to stay in Cornwall: our business takes us around the world from Australia to Colombia to North Wales and whilst theoretically we could have relocated anywhere, we really wanted to stay in Cornwall. Cornwall is where the ‘heart and soul’ of the business is and home to the team that started and built it from scratch, end of 2007, to what it is today.”
“Our current site at Penryn is a series of temporary buildings. Often the teams out on jobs across the world have better facilities to work in than our office and workshop employees. It has served us very well from our early start up days but it is now time to move on. As we often work on renewable energy projects and as a business and group of people we are environmentally conscious, we felt our new space should have environmental assets. Therefore having a building with a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating was important to us.”
Robert McGuffie Director of RJM Property & Development Consultants said: “ We are delighted to have secured this important investment from the ERDF Convergence Programme. This pre-let to LDD demonstrates the need for high quality buildings across Cornwall and in the Camborne Pool Redruth (CPR) area is still high. Once this building at the Energy Park is finished it will join other new builds across CPR such as the speculative development at Treleigh Industrial Estate which is nearing completion and offers interested businesses brand new solutions to expansion in Cornwall.”
One key motivation to moving was the drive by LDD to really accelerate expansion of their new ‘spin off’ company LM Handling. Mr Clark said: “ As a company founded in Cornwall we plan to expand operations from our current 70 employees over the next five years. We want to continue to create well paid, skilled jobs in an area traditionally reliant on low paid employment opportunities and contribute much more to putting Cornwall on the global map as a centre of excellence in our area of work; inspired by past times when Cornwall led the world in several areas, such as hard rock mining.”
Chris Pomfret, Chair of the LEP and Deputy Chair of the Convergence Local Management Committee, which steers the Convergence programme said: “ The worldwide interest in green and marine is growing at an astounding rate, one of our key ambitions is for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to be a pioneer in this sector. The expansion of LDD in the CPR area is an exciting prospect not only for business but also for future job creation and I wish this Cornish company all the best in their new home.”