Kitchen firm announces 750 jobs bonanza

Wren Kitchens is opening a state-of-the art manufacturing site off Falkland Way, Barton-Upon-Humber, to keep up with customer demand, where 600 of the new jobs will be.

There are already 429 people employed at the site which was taken over in 2013 from the American nappy manufacturer Kimberly-Clark.

Factories in Howden and Scunthorpe, where there are already over 1000 people employed, are also expanding and a recruitment drive has begun for a further 150 full-time positions.

The new jobs in Baton will include manufacturing, engineering, IT, customer services and training.

It comes as welcome news at a time of uncertainty over the future of steel-making at Scunthorpe, where 900 redundancies are being made and the sale of the Long Products Division to investment firm Greybull Capital.

The company said they were delighted to be bringing back manufacturing to the Barton site, where 500 people were employed when Kimberly-Clark was at its peak.

Wren’s Finance Director Mark Pullan said: “Wren was set up in 2009 as we believed there was a gap in the market for high quality kitchens at sensible prices.

“The company is able to offer this because it owns the entire supply chain, it manufactures its own products, it sells the products through its own retail stores and it delivers on its own fleet of vehicles. There are no middlemen and all of the savings we make are passed on to the consumer.”

Company sales now exceed quarter of a billion pounds and the company employs 2,491 people of which 1,352 are employed in the Humber Region.

Alongside the developments at Barton there will be an expansion of the operations at both Howden and Scunthorpe and a recruitment drive has begin for a further 150 full time positions.