Tiger Lifting UK has more than one reason to celebrate this year – it marked its 10th anniversary last month and despite the challenges of the pandemic and the UK leaving the EU, it moved into a new purpose-built building to meet increasing demand and is expanding its workforce.
The Tiger brand of lifting and winching products has been manufactured for over 50 years and employs over 100 people across distribution centres located in the UK, North America and Southeast Asia, its manufacturing plant is based in Taiwan and it has sales offices around the world.
The UK company was set up in 2011 with an initial focus on supplying Tiger chain blocks, lever hoists, clamps, trolleys and winches through its UK and European distributor base. By 2016, following the huge success of its patented quad cam pawl design in Tiger lever hoists and chain blocks, and after introducing more hoist capacities and product ranges including height safety hardware, and with a growing team to support these activities, it became apparent that the original site would soon be outgrown.
With this in mind Tiger’s UK centre moved into its new purpose-built premises in 2020, from Alnwick, in Northumberland, to Amble, also in Northumberland, and following some recent appointments, there are 22 staff at the site, with plans for more recruitment.
With more product development and introductions on the horizon, David Inglis, managing director, Tiger Lifting UK had the task of finding suitable alternative facilities. There were opportunities to source ready built premises, but they were all some distance from the current site and there was nothing on the right scale close enough.
“Our business is global and could operate from anywhere in the UK or Europe but we have a fantastic team of people working with us and wanted to find something local that suited our team and our ethos of a good work-life balance,” he said.
“We decided to find some suitable local land and build something fit for purpose. It took some time to source this. The land acquired was part of the vacant site of a former food factory, which has now been further developed with a supermarket and fuel station and there are plans for further retail development. The site is part of a well-established industrial estate with good road links to the various transport hubs.”
The current land was identified in 2017, with planning applications and the preparation of the land starting in 2018, construction started in 2019 and the building was completed at the end of 2019.
The development plans incorporated a warehouse, production and office facilities with a total space of nearly four times the previous location. Tiger Lifting UK has now been operating from this much larger premises for over 18 months, where it assembles and distributes products all over the world and is the Tiger manufacturing location for the established range of ROV operated chain blocks and the new range of Tiger pneumatic air hoists.
The new site has given the company the space it needed to expand its range of pneumatic air lifting products, which now has four ranges of hoists with lifting capacities from 250 kgs to 20 tons and includes pneumatic air winches and trolleys.
Alice Inglis, director, Tiger Lifting UK added it decided to postpone the ‘fanfare about the completion of its purpose-built UK premises last year as there were much more important things happening in 2020’.
“As we move into the “new normal”, these fantastic premises, that we’ve designed specifically to suit our business and future needs, allow us to continue our plans for expansion and further product development. We owe a huge thanks to our amazing team who have continued to operate efficiently, effectively and positively during challenging times, and to our global customer base for their continued investment in high quality, safe and reliable products,” she said.
Instrumental to the company’s success is its continued focus on safety and innovation. “There continues to be a huge demand for lifting solutions, in energy, entertainment, construction, mining and many other sectors,” added Inglis. “Reliability and serviceability of products, focusing on our clients’ requirements, globally patented innovation, and increasing the range of products we can develop and offer our customers is what keeps us as a global leader for hoisting and winching.”
