A £4M industrial estate built by a Flintshire construction and civil engineering firm is now fully let - securing 150 jobs for the area.

Kings Court in Sandycroft, built by The Hollingsworth Group near the firm’s headquarters in Engineer Park, is now home to 10 businesses spread across 12 units ranging in size from 4,500 square feet up to 18,000 square feet.

The new business park, off Prince William Avenue, has transformed a former piece of waste land into a thriving hub of industry by becoming home to various companies.

These include a family-run sachet packaging service firm which has doubled in size by moving to the site and the main UK arm of the international firm Broetje – a German firm which specialises in aerospace automation.

Shaun Hollingsworth is joint managing director of The Hollingsworth Group, which he set up with his brother Paul just over 30 years ago.

He said: “Kings Court has been a huge success for us. Each of the four phases of the site were let within six months of going on the market.

“There are not many new-build industrial units in the area and we wanted to create a very smart, clean, tidy, modern and well-equipped site which would be a pleasant place for people to come to work and create a really professional space for businesses to work from and invite their clients to.

“Our business is based here so we know what a fantastic location it is from where to access all the major motorway connections across North Wales and the north west.

“It is also within the Deeside Enterprise Zone which can bring added benefits to businesses who move here."

The Leader:

The 90,000 square foot site is a mixture of light industrial, warehouse and trade counter units and has been fully landscaped with on-site CCTV and a barrier at the entrance.

Environmentally-friendly elements include full LED lighting throughout, the latest and most effective insulation for all the units, a water recycling system which uses rain water from the roofs for fire tanks and electric car points have been installed at the request of one of the firms on the site.

The Leader:

One of the newest tenants is Walters Houghton, a family-run sachet packaging service firm, which took over the largest unit on the site 10 months ago. This has more than doubled its premises size from 9,000 square feet at its previous site in Flint to 18,000 sq feet.

Set up by husband and wife team, Nicola and Michael Walters and their business partner Alan Houghton 15 years ago, it has moved back to Sandycroft after starting up their firm at a former Hollingsworth Group unit close by. The business moved from there to another site in Flint which as the business expanded, became too small for their needs.

Nicola, Operations Director for Walters Houghton, which has a 25-strong team, said: “We started looking two years ago and for us, the location was very, very important.

“Our business is very image-based and relies upon us making the right impression to our clients when they come to us to package their products for them.

“When we came to visit Kings Court, our first impression was ‘wow’. It was just so clean, smart, and professional that we felt straight away that it would be a very good move for us.

“The unit hadn’t even been built at that stage and we knew it would be a six-month build time but we were prepared to wait because it is hard to imagine that we would have found anything better.”

The Leader:

Its new unit houses a clean room, a warehouse and office space with a conference room to ensure the business can operate efficiently.

It now has 11 machines up and running, with another on its way, up four from their previous site.

Kings Court follows on from Hollingsworth Group’s first industrial site, the 20,000 sq feet Holland Park, situated round the corner on Factory Road, which has five fully-let units.