Suits you? McLaren Automotive needs tailors and dressmakers in Rotherham

Supercar maker McLaren is hunting for tailors, dressmakers and boatbuilders as part of a recruitment drive to double the workforce at itsnew £50m factory in Rotherham.
TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Ms Ruth Nic Aoidh, executive director for commercial and legal.TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Ms Ruth Nic Aoidh, executive director for commercial and legal.
TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Ms Ruth Nic Aoidh, executive director for commercial and legal.

The luxury car firm is searching for candidates with specific skills to help work with pioneering materials such as ultra-lightweight carbon fibre at its Composites Technology Centre, which was launched a year ago.

McLaren said the next phase of recruitment will see it almost triple the current team of up to 70 staff to more than 200 by the time the site near Sheffield is in full production in early 2020.

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It w ants people with experience from a raft of sectors, from boat building to the textiles trade to sporting goods industries. The positions also include apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships.

McLaren said these specific skills are vital, because carbon fibre – which is used to build the chassis, or so-called tubs, at the core of its sports cars - starts life as a fabric.It has to be cut, put into moulds and then treated before becoming a hard material for use in car manufacturing.

The workforce at its new site on the Advanced Manufacturing Park will help make the next generation of McLare n carbon fibre ‘tubs ’ – chassis – that will be sent to its main car production c entre in Woking, Surrey.It is hoped the use of these advanced lighter materials w ill help save vehicle weight - boosting performance, as well as allowing supercars to become more energy-efficient.

Mike Flewitt, chief executive of McLaren Automotive, said: "As we're working with advanced, lightweight materials in new ways that have never been used before on this scale for car production, McLaren is lookingfor a range of skills you wouldn't normally associate with the automotive industry.

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"The advanced technologies and processes they will be working on could one day be used in other industries to produce lighter, and therefore more efficient, vehicles, which will not only help McLaren to continue to innovate, but the UK to become a global leader in composite materials expertise," he added.

The opening of the site a year ago was attended the by Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.