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Composites chief believes BT delay sends out wrong message [Derby Evening Telegraph (England)](Derby Evening Telegraph (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) THE boss of a hi-tech engineering firm has slammed telecommunications firm BT for delays in instal-ling technology at its new pur-pose-built Derby factory. Graham Mulholland, man-aging director of EPM Tech-nology, says his firm's move from Draycott to its new Pounds 6 million base, in Raynesway, has been delayed by several weeks as a result. His firm, which makes car-bon-fibre components for the motor sport, aerospace and defence sectors, received the keys to the 50,000sq ft prop-erty 18 weeks ago but it is still waiting for BT to finish in-stalling phone lines, alarms and broadband at the site. Mr Mulholland said that until the work is completed, the new factory could fully function. After taking to social net-working website Twitter to voice his frustration, BT has been in touch with Mr Mul-holland and a BT engineer was on site on Friday but he believes that the time it has taken for BT to get around to doing the work sends out the wrong message to companies looking to set up in the UK. He said: "To say it has been incredibly frustrating is something of an understate-ment. We have a brand new factory which looks superb, yet we cannot make a phone call from it. "What kind of message does this send out to businesses looking to build a factory in the UK? What if I was a foreign composites firm building a new factory in Derby or any-where else in the country for that matter? It would put me off investing in this country if I knew there were going to be such long delays." EPM, which is still oper- ating from Draycott, an-nounced that it was to open a factory in Derby last year, cre-ating around 80 jobs. It will double capacity and allow the company to increase produc-tion and do its own research and development. EPM has earned a world-wide reputation in carbon composites production. Among its high-profile clients are a number of Formula One teams, including Force India, who favour the super-light, durable qualities of carbon fibre. Demand for EPM's products has seen it outgrow its current premises and prompted the move to Derby. Mr Mulholland said: "Waiting for BT has delayed our move. Luckily, we have flexibility on our premises at Draycott." A BT spokesman said: "We apologies for the delay in providing services to EPM Technology. A number of is-sues have contributed to the delay, in this instance, the engineering work of deploy-ing a network to this new build site was complex and time-consuming. "BT Openreach engineers visited the site last week to carry out fitting and test work. It is estimated that ser-vice will be provided before the end of this week." [email protected] (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |