Hardide Coatings — the Oxfordshire-based provider of advanced surface-coating technology — has opened its new production facility in Virginia (USA).

The company began a $7 million expansion of its North American operations last January, and its sales to US and Canadian customers more than doubled last year. The new 26,000ft2 facility is expected to create up to 29 jobs over the next three years.

It will provide the company’s patented range of tungsten-carbide coatings for the oil and gas and flow-control markets. There are also plans to expand in the aerospace and advanced engineering sectors and to develop applications for a newly patented coating for diamonds.

Hardide CEO Philip Kirkham said: “Having a local production facility in North America will meet the increased
demand from existing customers and significantly boost opportunities to expand provision of our coatings throughout
the region.

“We have installed two large-capacity chemical vapour deposition coating reactors, and work is already progressing
well on some very exciting customer trials.

“Production for North American customers — currently being carried out in the UK — will be gradually transferred
to Virginia on a phased basis, taking load and capacity of both sites into consideration. We have also invested in an ultra-fast broadband cable between the UK and US sites.”

The first two senior employees at the new production facility — Jamey Ewing (coatings supervisor) and Barry Farmer (pre-treatment supervisor) — spent 12 weeks in Oxfordshire last summer, being trained on Hardide coating production processes and techniques. They returned to Virginia in September to assist with the installation and commissioning of the process, production and quality-control equipment.