£3million a year deal for Sunderland’s Signal Plastics

Signal Plastics, based in Washington, has expanded rapidly and diversified since it was founded just six years ago.

The opportunity was presented to Signal, part of the Omega Plastics Group, as a result of the North East Automotive Alliance inviting Signal to manufacturing supply chain event Subcon 2018.

The event led to a contract with an international company which has developed world-leading heating products in both domestic and commercial central heating.

Signal operations director and co-founder Julian Jamieson said: “Working on this contract from concept through to volume production has been a great achievement for us at Signal and our colleagues at Omega Plastics.

“Together we were able to advise on best design for manufacture methods for the injection mould tooling, which were manufactured in the UK at Omega facilities, support the supply chain to procure the bought-in items which are assembled on to the valve and develop a balanced assembly line whilst meeting all the necessary quality assurance checks.

“Our core business is the automotive market and we have a robust game-plan in place for growth - our mindset is based on being a Tier 2 supplier with a Tier 1 mentality.

“The tools and techniques embedded in Signal allowed us to successfully tender for this major contract with a non-automotive customer. This ironically has the added bonus of reducing risk to the business due to any volatility in the automotive sector.”

Established in 2012, the firm was initially housed in an 11,000 sq.ft. unit in Tilley Road, Washington. In 2015, it merged with Omega Plastics and has continued to grow, trebling sales to £3million last year.

The continued investment resulted in relocation to a 43,000 sq ft unit in Bentall Business Park in 2017, creating more than 15 jobs in the process.

The move was supported by Sunderland City Council’s business investment team.

Sunderland City Council leader Coun Graeme Miller said: “Signal Plastics is a real success story for Sunderland.

“They’ve rapidly emerged in a competitive industry and carved out a place for themselves, growing and expanding with impressive speed.”