Mira Showers opened its new £6 million state-of-the-art factory in Melton West, Hull, last Friday (February 24th 2012) in a move that secures the jobs of 80 staff and puts the company further in the vanguard of shower tray manufacture in the UK.
The new factory – officially opened by local MP David Davis and Dave Hill, Kohler Mira Managing Director – produces the market-leading Flight and Flight Low ranges of shower trays and shower wall panels; incorporates state-of-the-art manufacturing robots, lasers and automation to boost production. The facility will enable Mira to meet the increasing demand for the Flight range, which has grown by 20% year-on-year over the past two years, with up to 40% of sales going overseas.
The move will have significant environmental advantages too, cutting the amount of waste going to land fill by 300 tonnes per year and reducing the carbon footprint of the old facility by 180 tonnes per year. It will also reduce traffic through residential areas as well as reducing the heavy goods traffic through Hull by 35,000 miles per year.
The Flight range also has strong environmental credentials because of the technology it employs and the large proportion of recycled material it incorporates. The trays themselves reduce the need for domestic cleaning products because the BioCote® impregnated into all their surfaces reduces bacterial and mould growth by up to 99.9% so the trays do not need cleaning as often and do not require strong cleaning agents.
The back skin of all of the Mira trays is made from 90% recycled acrylic, while the other 10% is virginal material to ensure correct bonding and so a robust product. The waste is also made from a proportion of recycled ABS.
The Flight and Flight Low ranges use less material than other brands due to their unique patented back-hat design, which saves weight, reduces material and provides rigidity so that the trays are more efficient to manufacture and transport.
The company’s recycling policy ensures that all acrylic off cuts are sold and fed back into the industry while the custom built pallets are used and re-used until failure and then re-cycled.