Kilwaughter Minerals, which supplies lime and renders to the construction and agriculture industries, has grown its research and development team by 50%.
The Country Antrim company said the move is part of a £3.4 million investment and will include the recruitment of three further PhD scientists.
Demand has grown for Kilwaughter’s products, including colour renders, external wall insulation systems and soil health conditioning minerals as the economy rebounded following the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
Dr. Ross Savage, Head of R&D at Kilwaughter Minerals said innovation is key to the company’s future.
“Boosting innovation and increasing investment at our R&D centre is core to meeting the sustained demand we are experiencing as well as futureproofing the business to service the evolving needs of our customers,” he said. “Having established a strong reputation for engineering high performance products, our focus is now on developing new technologies and using these to drive product excellence and deliver new levels of performance and efficiencies to our industries.”
A recent report by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) estimated R&D investment in Northern Ireland was more than £881.4m last year, an annual increase of 11%, and that is expected to be matched if not exceeded when new figures are released this year.
“We have been building our customer insight to allow us to confidently deepen our investment in new technologies and new products,” Gary Wilmot, Chief Executive, Kilwaughter Minerals. “We are creating a culture that puts high value on ideas and creativity and I’m confident that we have an exciting future ahead of us.”
