Tees Valley Mayor Visits Nifco

Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has visited Nifco to learn more about one of Tees Valley’s biggest success stories.

Nifco designs, develops and manufactures quality components for the global automotive industry and its products can be found in the interior, exterior and engines of many vehicles worldwide.

The Eaglescliffe business, which makes parts used by the likes of BMW Mini, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Jaguar, Landrover, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and Vauxhall Opel, reported a record turnover of £71m in 2016, a 14% increase on the previous year.

Mr Houchen said: “Nifco is a perfect demonstration of a world-class company based in the automotive components industry.

“It is a business that has gone from 160 employees in 2008 to more than 650 today, it exports to 286 different plants across the world, in 30 different countries and that’s 37 million component parts every single month so it’s a real success story for manufacturing in the UK and the Tees Valley.

“One of the things I’ve taken away from this visit is the need for good, skilled workers in the Tees Valley. Nifco is supporting that through its apprenticeship schemes, getting people into the trades and I think it’s the one thing that we need to heavily support through our further education colleges, schools and universities to make sure we support the skilling of our local workforce to provide highly-skilled people to fill the jobs that are coming down the line.”

Mike Matthews, Managing Director, Nifco commented: “We were delighted to welcome the Tees Valley Mayor to visit our site. We are very proud of our facilities in Eaglescliffe and, as one of Tees Valley’s largest employers, we look forward to working with Mr Houchen on a number of initiatives in the future – including placing a much-needed highlight on the key issue of developing and keeping skilled workers for our area – to secure a long-term successful future for all.”

Full video can be found here.