• Thurston Group opens its doors at exclusive Made in Yorkshire event 
• Partnership with Wrxflo sees the firm increase productivity by 25 per cent 

Yorkshire-based offsite manufacturer, Thurston Group, opened its doors in mid-June for an exclusive event with trade body, Made in Yorkshire, as it showcased the improvements made to its company culture, digital infrastructure and facilities in recent years. The firm is targeting £104m turnover by 2027.  

Thurston Group currently turns over £51m and employs 377 talented staff across four sites in Yorkshire. The firm is growing at an impressive rate, having recently acquired Storplan, a specialist fabrication business, and the assets of Alsim System Building, a temporary living and secure accommodation specialist, following its insolvency.  

The Made in Yorkshire Factory Tour saw Thurston open its doors to over 40 manufacturers from the national Made In network, including Rolls-Royce PLC, Trojan Baths, and A.W. Hainsworth & Sons.  

The event kicked off with a candid talk from Thurston’s managing director, Matt Goff, before attendees embarked on a tour around the working factory, they then returned to a panel discussion involving our senior leadership team. 

Matt’s presentation prominently featured Thurston’s remarkable growth, directly attributing it to the leadership team’s forward-thinking embrace of digital transformation. This significant shift in mindset – prioritising not only business expansion but also empowering employees through new digital tools and processes – has been the core driver behind the firm’s success, culminating in the doubling of turnover over the past seven years. 

As part of the factory tours, which were led by four senior team members, Thuston showcased its newly renovated machine shop, demonstrating the evolving integration of automation in its processes, a transformation delivered in partnership with Software as a Service (SaaS) company, WrxFlo. 

Speaking about the event, Matt Goff, said: “It was a pleasure to welcome the Made in Yorkshire community to our site. This is a really important time for our business as we’re implementing technologies that are allowing us to truly level up our business. The improvements that Wrxflo have helped us to unlock through process standardisation, operational efficiency gains and cultural shifts on the shopfloor as a result, have been astounding.  

“As Made in Yorkshire members, it was wonderful to share this progress with our peers and learn from one another how we can all work together to improve manufacturing in Yorkshire and pioneer British made products across the nation and globe.” 

Thurston Group was founded in 1970 and was acquired by private industrial investment company HLD Group in 2021 through a £16m asset-based lending (ABL) facility that formed part of the total acquisition cost. 

Thurston works with hundreds of clients across a range of sectors, including Sunbelt, Wernick Hire, Network Rail, Public Health England, and INEOS.  

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