Bosch to open £1.2m service centre in region

Bosch is establishing a £1.2m state-of-the-art customer service and training facility in Wakefield.

A Bosch spokesman said the new centre was a sign of the company’s commitment to developing services in Yorkshire.

Peter Fouquet, the president of Bosch UK, said yesterday: “We are delighted to be officially opening our new facility in Wakefield and are sure that it will enable us to provide even better service and training to our customers in the North.”

The site, which will employ 45 staff, consolidates three existing Bosch Rexroth locations and a Worcester Bosch training centre. The 3.6-acre site will include 7,500 square feet of expansion space, giving Bosch room to grow and hire more staff.

The Bosch Group has around 300,000 staff and generated sales of 51.4bn euros in 2011.

It operates in the automotive and industrial technology, consumer goods, and building technology services sectors.

It has more than 350 subsidiaries in 60 countries.

The company was set up in Stuttgart in 1886 by Robert Bosch as a “Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering.”

Ninety-two per cent of the share capital of Robert Bosch is held by Robert Bosch Stiftung, a charitable foundation. The majority of voting rights are held by Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand, an industrial trust.

The entrepreneurial functions are carried out by the trust. The remaining shares are held by the Bosch family and by Robert Bosch GmbH.

Worcester, which is part of the Bosch Group, is a manufacturer of domestic gas and oil-fired boilers in the UK. The company also provides renewable energy sys- tems.

Its portfolio includes ground source heat pumps, air-to-water heat pumps and underfloor heating.

Many German firms have expanded overseas in recent years, due to the strength of the country’s economy.

Germany has fared better than many of its rivals during a period of economic upheaval which has caused chaos in parts of the eurozone.