A major manufacturer in Monmouth teamed up with a local builder when they wanted a large building erected.

Siltbuster provide packaged plant water solutions worldwide and are situated on the Wonastow Road.

When they needed a specialised building put up, they called in Ben Crockett of BWC Groundworks to provide a building to allow Siltbuster to add to their production space and maximise the workshop area.

David James of Siltbuster explained that it was an old barn when it was a greenfield site so that was removed and demolished, providing a one way system for traffic on the Siltbuster site.

“It was rebuilt as a steel-framed and steel clad building for our new stores, which enables us to move all our stores from the present building, freeing up more production space to maximise our workshop area.

“We are in discussion into further expansion looking at another building in the next two years,” he added.

David explained that the firm is keen to take on as many locally sourced employees as they can.

“We are presently at 98 employees and will be hitting 100 employees very soon,

He explained that they run their own apprenticeship programme, “10 percent of our workforce are either trainees, apprentices or graduates.

“We go out into schools to show what we do and we try to employ locally. Currently 60 percent of our employees are local.

“It fits the model the council are looking for which is manufacturing facilities next to residential areas to create local employment.

“Apprenticeships usually start at 18 although we have taken 17-year-olds this year, but normally we go for 18 plus as they would need to attend college in Cwmbran so we take them on for 12 months as a trainee to give them the chance to get to know us through working in the various departments and if they have success with that, they then progress to a four-year apprenticeship.

“We do advertise on our website, the key is to try to catch that local market hence the engagement with the careers fair and MCS to show who we are and what we do.

Justine Buxton added: “We will start engaging with primary schools soon to get them to understand what we do here and maybe do a few little competitions with them.”

David went on to say: “Where we possibly can, we use local companies such as Ben Crockett of, we use lots of local businesses, the majority of our fabrication is done within S Wales as well, that whole angle of trying to keep our resources close.

Not only do they look to sustain a local workforce, but they keep one eye on the environment, something the firm are experts in.

Rainwater is harvested from part of their roof area to be used for testing the water treatment units they manufacture before they are shipped out to clients..

“We have to manage all our water on site,” explained David.

“We have two attenuation ponds to cover the yard and everything else, and have just subscribed to Gwent Wildlife as a corporate sponsor to enhance that area.

“The site is a very ecological site: we have dark skylights and manage our light levels for bats and dormice and get ecologists in twice a year to monitor the area.

“The British Dragonfly Society are doing a survey for the next ten years as the attenuation ponds attract dragonflies

“They saw eight varieties here and another four or five at the ponds, some species they hadn’t seen in Monmouth for a few years.

Plus, we have a family of toads!”