TURNING UP THE HEAT ON NEW INVESTMENT

14:00 - 10 May 2003 Comyn Ching Solray is a family-owned company established nearly 300 years ago. Then, instead of heating panels, it made door-knockers and letterboxes and manufactured the ironmongery for the Titanic.

More recently, it provided the heating for the new Neath Port Talbot Hospital. Other customers have included Gatwick, Dublin and Edinburgh airports; scores of other hospitals including Guy's, Great Ormond Street and St James; prisons, schools and laboratories.

The company make heating panels which can be fitted in ceilings, taking up no floor or wall space. Solray began manufacturing the panels in 1928 and have customers nationwide. The firm is moving out of London because of staffing and congestion problems.

Expansion on its present site is also impossible. The company's Swansea-born production director Norman Richards said: "I have had to go into work at 4am sometimes just to get lorries in and out before the London traffic builds up. "And it has been difficult finding the skills we need in a London workforce."

The move to Gorseinon is expected to take place in the autumn, when the factory, being built by Swansea-based Dean and Dyball, is complete. Skills being looked for by Solray include sheet metal workers, welders, powder-coaters, studders and assemblers. Solray managing director Alastair Comyn Ching said: "We will be here for a long time after the factory is built and we want to extend into new markets. "We also want to build relationships with locally-based firms and investors."