A new 80,000 sq ft refrigeration factory for Hubbard Products, one of the UK’s leading designers, manufacturers and suppliers of commercial cooling equipment, has been completed at Futura Park, Ipswich.

Futura Park is one of New Anglia Local Enterprise Park’s Space to Innovate Enterprise Zone sites.  The Space to Innovate Enterprise Zone comprises 10 sites across Norfolk and Suffolk. This multi-site zone will help to create 18,500 jobs over the next 25 years. 

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.

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. 

Ilias Katsoulis, CEO of Hubbard Products, said: “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.”

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.”