AquiGen keeps cool to deliver refrigeration factory to Futura Park during pandemic
17 May 2021
AquiGen Real Estate Solutions has delivered an 80,000 sq. ft. factory on a 3.85-acre plot at its business hub, Futura Park, Ipswich in under six months. The quality, fit-for-purpose factory will be home to commercial refrigeration firm, Hubbard Products (part of the Daikin Group), one of the UK’s leading designers, manufacturers and suppliers of commercial cooling equipment that has earned a global reputation for innovation and design-led excellence. Hubbard is one of the town’s largest manufacturing businesses that will move into the building soon after completion on 26 March.
The project - a collaboration between AquiGen and its delivery partners, Marbank Construction, Hale Architects and Stace Project Management - was first granted planning consent in April 2020. The energy-efficient building (EPC rating A) has been designed to provide modern production and warehouse space, a two-storey office block, 150 car parking spaces for staff and visitors with electric vehicle (EV) charging points and cycle parking.
Paul Isaacs, Managing Director of AquiGen, comments: “The Hubbard Products factory is the penultimate site to be developed at Futura Park and we are pleased to welcome Hubbard to the fold.
“We would like to thank Ipswich Borough Council, our professional team and our contractors for their hard work to ensure the new premises be handed over on time and within budget despite the coronavirus restrictions. The new factory will offer Hubbard’s employees a fresh environment in which to work and provide more jobs to the local community.”
Hubbard Products currently employs 170 staff with hopes to expand its workforce by nearly 50% over the next four years. This is good news for Futura Park and the local job market at a time when 55% of manufacturing firms in the UK have workers furloughed, according to latest figures from manufacturer’s organisation, Make UK. *
CEO of Hubbard Products, Ilias Katsoulis, comments: “We cannot wait to move into our new home at Futura Park and would like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in its development. Our innovative, new facility will create the perfect environment for further improving efficiency and excellence in the manufacturing of quality commercial and transport refrigeration and cooling equipment for the retail, food manufacturing and hospitality and pharmaceutical industries.
“The factory will generate new value for Hubbard’s ‘blue-chip’ customers as well as the local community, providing advanced products and job opportunities for the next four years and beyond.”
Ipswich Council Leader, Councillor David Ellesmere, adds: “It has been a pleasure working with AquiGen on this project, which they have managed to complete incredibly quickly. With unemployment continuing to rise because of Covid I’m really pleased we are able to welcome a larger Hubbard Products factory - and the quality manufacturing jobs it will bring – to Ipswich.”
AquiGen has sold the investment to Royal Sun Alliance.
AquiGen first acquired the derelict and contaminated site in 2011 from administrators before transforming it into Futura Park, the popular retail and business hub that it is today, creating over 1,500 jobs and boosting the local economy in the process. The site includes John Lewis at Home, Waitrose, DFS, Costa Coffee, Jaguar Land Rover, Audi, Volvo, Mazda and Lok N Store.
