A WENSLEYDALE company has just bought a new piece of machinery in the latest stage of a £170,000 investment.

Weatherald Wood, a high quality wood components manufacturer, has been investing in its plant at Askrigg for the past year and has now installed a CNC machining centre.

The new equipment helps to confirm the firm's position as the largest manufacturing company in the Northern Yorkshire Dales and one of the country's leading producers of specialist wood components.

Weatherald has built its reputation on producing high quality kitchen and bathroom components such as cooker hood canopies, display units, bath panels and vanity units made from solid hard or soft wood, as well as from materials such as MDF.

It specialises in complex design and manufacturing, with a short lead time and small or long production runs, and supplies customers such as Hygiena, Twyfords and Spur Shelving.

The machining centre means Weatherald can use a single piece of equipment for what were previously separate production stages, such as routing and drilling. It is already helping to speed up production runs and adding considerably to efficiency.

Since being bought out from its ailing parent construction company less than three years ago, Weatherald Wood's investment programme has been impressive.

It has meant the company has been able to move the thrust of its business from producing items customers could incorporate into products largely built at their own factories to manufacturing complete units.

A 3,300 sq ft storage facility to provide a temperature and humidity-controlled environment for finished units awaiting delivery is soon to come on line.

The company says this will make it easier for it to provide just-in-time delivery, increasing efficiency even further.