Clean Break for Hoover Research and Development
May 2010 marks the first anniversary of Hoover's move from the old factory based offices at Cambuslang to a new facility at Uddingston. The Research and Development Team, as the last remaining part of the Cambuslang workforce, have settled into the new surroundings which incorporate new offices and laboratories with brand new state-of-the-art Floorcare testing equipment.
Hoover, an early SPRA Corporate Member, was originally an American owned company, founded in 1908, which developed the first "Hoover" vacuum cleaner, became a limited company in 1919 and settled in the UK in 1932 at Perivale in West London. The Floorcare factory in Cambuslang, Scotland was set up in 1946.
The UK facilities were operated by Hoover until 1995 when the European arm of the Company was sold, including the famous brand, to the Candy Group. The Candy Group is a family owned business based in Milan, Italy with a strong European presence in the white goods sector. Hoover was acquired to strengthen the white goods side of the Candy business, and also gave Candy a start into the Floorcare business.
From 1995, Candy worked to make this new business within Small Domestic Appliances (SDA) an effective division within the company. This plan was very successful, and in 2005, Hoover became the Number 1 brand in Europe (for SDA, by volume, according to GfK marketing data).
The Floorcare business, primarily based in Scotland, was operated from 1995, while all the time trying to make this part of the business profitable. Finally in 2002, cost pressures forced the company to look offshore for a lower cost manufacturing base. China was selected due to the incumbent Floorcare expertise that already existed, and also since Floorcare products are relatively small and can be container shipped economically in large quantities. Hoover now has an engineering office in Suzhou City, China which manages the development and introduction of new Floorcare products for the European market.
The last production line closed at Cambuslang in June 2005, nearly 60 years after production started, the end of an era! Whilst production of Floorcare products in the UK had ceased, the company took the decision to retain the R & D facility in Scotland. This decision was based on the skill of the employees within the R & D team which could not easily be transferred offshore.
The R & D team continues to flourish especially in these new surroundings. Development continues in a number of specialist areas; prototype and production conformance testing, approvals and safety testing, competitor analysis, separation development and testing and general filtration development.
The business has also leveraged local investment support with funding for R & D Projects.
The links to local academic establishments have been extremely fruitful:
- a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme has been running for the past year with Strathclyde University;
- a PhD 3 year project is due to start at the end of the summer;
- over the past 4 years Hoover has run successful University Projects (both individual and group) with Strathclyde University, The University of the West of Scotland and Glasgow School of Art;
- Fluid Dynamics courses have also been run internally for existing employees to extend the knowledge base.
So, in spite of losing the manufacturing side of the business to offshore locations, Hoover sees great benefit in keeping an active R & D team in Scotland, and seeks to leverage these benefits more and more in the coming years.
Report by John Semple R&D Manager Hoover Candy Group
