Business Minister hails Cab Automotive’s Regional Growth Fund success in the West Midlands
Cab Automotive, based in Tipton, has been awarded £1.6 million of Regional Growth Funding
A manufacturing company that supplies interior components for the car industry will be able to upgrade its machinery after it had its Regional Growth Fund (RGF) award confirmed today (Thursday 11 July) by Business Minister Michael Fallon.
Cab Automotive, based in Tipton, has been awarded £1.6 million of RGF funding from Round 3 and are investing £8 million of their own money towards purchasing their premises and investing in new machinery.
The funding will enable the specialist company to continue to supply its customers such as Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota with high quality seats and interior trim. This has already safeguarded 198 jobs and allowed the firm to take on 20 new skilled staff.
The visit comes on the same day as the selected bidders for Round 4 of RGF were announced for the whole country which shared an increased pot of £506 million across 102 different projects and programmes.
The West Midlands saw a strong showing and has been allocated £57m across 16 different projects and programmes which will create and safeguard 10,800 jobs from Round 4. This will leverage up to £460m of private sector investment to help rebalance the economy and drive growth.
Business Minister Michael Fallon said:
The Regional Growth Fund is helping to kickstart British business – especially manufacturing which is a real boon for jobs and growth in the West Midlands. Altogether RGF is investing £420 million into the region to help companies expand and create long-term employment.
Cab Automotive is a great example of this. The RGF funding will secure long term employment and support the growth for UK based auto manufacturers that sell across the globe. This is in parallel to our forthcoming launched industrial strategy for the automotive sector. Success stories like this are happening up and down the country thanks to the Regional Growth Fund.
Richard McCulloch Cabauto’s Finance Director said:
The RGF grant has given the Company the confidence to invest in new plant and equipment which has already proven dividends with new orders of over £10 million. This is exactly what the fund is for and as an SME this gives us the springboard for sustainable growth and job creation.
Notes to editors
1.The Regional Growth Fund (RGF) is a competitive £3.2 billion fund operating across England from 2011 to 2017. It supports projects and programmes that are using private sector investment to create economic growth and sustainable employment. For further information please visit www.gov.uk/understanding-the-regional-growth-fund
2.Cab Automotive Ltd was established in 2005 as a privately owned company specialising in supplying the automotive sector with seats and interior trim. Major customers include Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, Bentley, McLaren and Magna for Toyota products.
3.You can follow @bispressoffice, @bisgovuk, @RGFgrowthFund and @DPMoffice on twitter for further RGF updates and photos from the Ministerial visits on Thursday 11 July.
4.At the latest spending round the Treasury announced a further £600 million funding for the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) in both 2015-16 and 2016-17 to support projects and programmes to create economic growth and sustain private sector employment.
5.The other projects and programmes announced in the West Midlands from Round 4 are:
West Midlands
List of bidders with conditional offers
- GBS Mezzanine Funding Programme (Birmingham City Council Programme)
- Coventry and Warwickshire Business Finance (Coventry and Warwickshire LEP - Programme)
- The Marches and Worcestershire Redundant Building Grant Programme (Herefordshire Council - Programme)
- Jaguar Land Rover Ltd
- Jaguar Land Rover Ltd
- Jaguar Land Rover Ltd
- King Automotive Systems Ltd
- Malvern Instruments Ltd
- NVC Lighting Ltd
- Robinson Brothers Ltd
- Growing Priority Sectors in the Black Country (Sandwell MBC - Programme)
- Innovative Growth in Stoke on Trent and Staffordshire (Stoke on Trent City Council - Programme)
- Tata Steel UK Ltd
- TRW Automotive - College Road
- Wade Ceramics Limited
- Worcestershire Expansion Fund (Worcestershire County Council - Programme)
6.The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set four ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’, published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.