In 1999 the company established the Textile Centre of Excellence, a £2 million development located on Leeds Road in Huddersfield, providing a wide range of ‘state of the art’ textile and clothing training and production facilities including:

• a technical workshop for carding, spinning, warping and weaving operations
• a research and product-testing laboratory
• a fully equipped clothing studio
• information technology training suites
• award winning multi-media meeting and conferencing facilities

The 20,000 sq. ft. Centre offers quality assured, flexible training at all levels from introductory courses and Modern Apprenticeships to training for technicians and managers. A range of professional services is also offered including Occupational Health, Environmental and Health and Safety services provided by the Centre’s in-house expert team. The Centre, which employs 35 staff, is a BS EN ISO 9001: 2000 Standard company and is a recognised ‘Investor in People’. The Centre has 65 member companies and, even though the sector continues to experience a decline in some areas, membership is rising. The last year has seen a major period of innovation and expansion and the introduction of many exciting new activities including:

• The ‘Design Incubator’, launched in October 2004, where each year 12 of the region’s best textile and fashion design graduates will be selected by local textile and clothing company leaders to start up new businesses in a purpose-built unit;
• The ‘Manufacturing Leadership Programme’, a radical new approach to developing the manufacturing company leaders of tomorrow;
• ‘Equalskills’, a new approach to learning all about computers that can be customised to feature text and ‘voice-overs’ in any language;
• The Technical Textiles Programme, helping companies to move into the high-tech world of manufacturing with advanced materials.