Medway sees multi-milliIon pound investment from BAE Industry

It is hoped around three hundred jobs will be created in the area.  Kristin Hawthorne reports.

Transcript

00:00Aerospace and defence giant BAE Systems is putting £220m into its Rochester base to

00:08transform the area and bring in hundreds of new jobs.

00:12BAE staff specialised in advanced technology for civil and military aircraft, providing

00:18kit for Boeing, Airbus and NATO for fighter jets, and this investment is one of the largest

00:24it has made in its 25-year history.

00:27The business has been really founded on, say, high-integrity controls, so primary flight

00:31controls, the electronic fly-by-wire systems that sit at the heart of an aircraft, but

00:35also head-up displays that pilots look through for situational awareness and weapon systems

00:41and things like helmet-mounted displays as well.

00:43The funds will go towards replacing outdated buildings and new factory and car parks.

00:48The expected 36,000-square-metre facility will contain manufacturing, engineering and

00:54office space inside.

00:56Effectively, what we're doing is building a brand-new factory on our back car park here.

01:00We're going to demolish the current buildings and also update those at the same time, so

01:03virtually every building on the site here is going to be modernised through the next

01:06five years.

01:07It'll be a significant investment for the local area, so we're already creating a huge

01:11number of jobs here on the site.

01:13We've grown from a number of about 1,250 jobs just a few years back to over 1,600, near

01:181,800 I think by the end of this year, and we're planning to get up to about 2,100 jobs

01:23on the site here, all high-value jobs as well.

01:27Demolishing of the previous sites has begun, and construction is expected to begin at the

01:31start of the new year.

01:33This is what the old factory used to look like, and this is what it is expected to look

01:38like after construction.

01:39Obviously the foundation of the business is our engineering capability, but we have our

01:43own operations team here who build the equipment.

01:45We've got our own finance and commercial and HR and procurement teams as well, so a whole

01:49range of experiences that people can have with us.

01:52Once construction is finished, it will add around 300 jobs, hoping to draw in highly

01:57skilled workers to the area.

01:59Kristen Hawthorne for KMTV.