High performance car-maker TVR is expected resume production at a converted factory near Rassau, Blaenau Gwent.
The news was released today by Welsh Government as a flagship for its £100M ten-year plan to attract investment to the Heads of the Valleys after the Circuit of Wales venture failed to win support earlier this year.
The TVR £30M plan to build its new 200mph Griffith sports car in South Wales was outlined in 2015 but there have been difficulties in negotiating a suitable factory and even today’s statement by Welsh Government was cautiously stating it “hoped” the intended building would be used as it has yet to be agreed by TVR, but it’s expected to be signed off very soon.
Welsh Government will lease the 185,000 sqft former Techboard Building in Rassau, first discussed as the TVR location in August 2016, and it will work with the Dewan Foundation Trust which owns the former Tech building and invest in a multi-million-pound refurbishment project in order to attract the key sector businesses the project needs in 2018.
It is hoping the TVR investment and the 150 assembly jobs created from autumn 2018 will act as a catalyst to bring in other automotive suppliers and companies.
It may also encourage emerging technologies to set up in the area under the Welsh Government’s Tech Valleys vision document for the upper reaches of the South Wales area connected by the A465, where improvements are already a year behind schedule to speed communications.
Tech-Board site was part of the biggest ever venture-capital backed greenfield manufacturing startup in British history in the early 1990s when £35M was raised. It took eight years to get into production and went through Receivership before it closed down.
TVR want to make four new models over ten years in South Wales and said they hold 350 deposits for the forthcoming Griffith which will use a new type of assembly system created by Gordon Murray of McLaren fame.
The prototype new Griffith was unveiled this autumn after being assembled at a specialist contract builder in England.
