New £5.5m training centre welcomes first intake of young engineers

Welcoming around 80 business representatives to the centre, Iain Elliott, HETA’s chief executive, urged them to continue to work in partnership.

The new centre is purpose-built and provides facilities for electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and fabrication and welding, with an IT suite, classrooms and meeting rooms.

It sits at the heart of North East Lincolnshire Council’s £42m South Humber Industrial Investment Programme (SHIIP) area, which is being promoted as a major industrial development opportunity.

Around 200 of the young people starting at Stallingborough, Foxhills in Scunthorpe and the company’s headquarters in Hull have already secured jobs. Capacity at Stallingborough will increase as more businesses move into the area.

Mr Elliott said: “This is the culmination of about nine years of thought, discussion and planning – and more than a few sleepless nights. We couldn’t have picked a worse time to build it. We exited Covid, the war started in Ukraine, material costs were soaring and supply of materials and labour were an issue. But we were only two weeks late and we were on budget.”

The total investment is £5.5m, broken down into a building cost of about £4.2m with land purchase, fees and VAT making up the rest. Added to the cost of the new Hull centre, HETA has invested £10m since 2018 in upgrading its property and facilities. The Foxhills centre opened in 2014.

Mr Elliott added: “What we have done with this last piece of the jigsaw is transform HETA’s real estate across the Humber region.

"We have a set of training centres that provide the best learning and working environment for young people; people coming in to take adult courses and for our own staff. It’s important to give them the best working environment.”