Record year of growth for Technidrive

Northern Ireland-based Technidrive, an industrial drives specialist, has announced a record year of investment and business growth. To support a 22.5% increase in turnover, the company has invested in a ‘state of the art’ facility, spending over £250,000 on improvements to the assembly and painting areas as well as an extension to hold increased stock levels.

The extensive investment in Technidrive’s 24,000ft² facility includes the creation of a mezzanine floor, additional warehouse racking and the deployment of an Aisle-Master forklift to maximise storage capacity. The assembly facility can now accommodate up to £4 million in stock of drives, motors, industrial gear units and automation.

The additional space will facilitate the growing demand for drive assembly and supply from Technidrive, which serves as the appointed partner of Hitachi industrial inverter and PLC components, Bonfiglioli gear units and electric motors, WEG inverters, gear units and motors. Along with other leading manufactures such as Vega, Omron, Reo and the company’s own Powerdrive brand gears.

Technical and engineering expertise
In addition to equipment investments, Technidrive has grown its team with the appointment of five new members of staff. The new appointments bring the organisation’s headcount to 27, with a large proportion of staff holding technical and engineering expertise.

David Strain, technical director at Technidrive, said: “We have prioritised the improvement of our facility to ensure we can hold a large volume of stock. We need to ensure that our customers are shielded from supply chain issues and have a steady supply of premium products for their production.

“The increase in space also allows us to develop new and customised drive solutions — such as a new compact drum drive that we have recently developed for high torque, low-speed applications. We regularly receive requests for bespoke equipment and smarter use of our space allows us to facilitate this. Looking towards the future, we plan to expand the floorspace further by extending the warehouse.”

Outside of the facility, Technidrive has invested in the company’s sustainability efforts by transferring 60% of all company vehicles to electric models. This project saw the installation of WEG WEMOB electric vehicle charging stations on site. The investment contributed to Technidrive being awarded the ‘Top Performing Small Business’ award in the Northern Ireland environmental benchmarking survey in 2022.