< Previous10 Business Link www.blmforum.net COMMERCIAL PROPERTY A s the return to the office trend continues, the past couple of months have seen a huge deal, flurry of lettings and progress made on new offices in Yorkshire. In Leeds, Central Square, in the heart of the financial district, has been acquired by Ashtrom Properties UK for £78m — representing the biggest office investment deal in the city for more than five years. Central Square comprises 217,249 sq ft of Grade A office accommodation across 11 upper floors above 13,126 sq ft of retail, restaurant and ground floor leisure units. It has one of the largest column free floor plates in the city of circa 25,000 sq ft and houses a Winter Garden and Sky Garden with break out and entertainment space for tenants along with 128 basement parking spaces. Its sustainability credentials include BREEAM Outstanding and EPC A. Current tenants include Marks & Spencer PLC, PWC, RSM UK Management, Freeths, GXO Logistics, Sky, Sanderson Weatherall, and BDO Services. CBRE and Knight Frank acted for Ashtrom Properties UK on the purchase. Savills acted on the sale. Will Kennon, executive director, CBRE, said: “Central Square is one of the best regional office assets located outside of London. Leeds is experiencing significant growth across all metrics, and the office market is facing an acute shortage of prime office space which we believe will lead to continued strong rental growth over the next cycle. With the market facing continued development viability challenges, we consider this acquisition will deliver strong risk adjusted returns over both short and long term. We are delighted to have helped Ashtrom An eye on offices With a major deal, plethora of lettings and new workspace coming on stream, Business Link highlights Yorkshire’s office market. 12 Áwww.blmforum.net Business Link 11 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Central Square12 Business Link www.blmforum.net COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Properties UK secure this exceptional asset, to add to their strong UK office portfolio in line with its current strategy to invest in core regional cities.” Remaining in Leeds, myriad new lettings have been revealed, such as national law firm Thompsons Solicitors sealing a deal at 10 South Parade, seeing it now fully let. Thompsons agreed to take 3,640 sq ft of Grade A office space on a 10-year lease. CBRE’s Office Agency team in Leeds secured the latest tenant, acting for Wilton Developments, who develop and manage the building for the owners East Parade Ltd. This latest occupier follows a deal with marketing agency IDHL, who swooped for the largest floor within the building, occupying 9,600 sq ft on a new 10-year lease. Moreover, Shelborn Asset Management has secured another letting at their redevelopment of South Central, following recent deals with AON, Keepmoat and Inseego UK Ltd. Bluesmith Information Systems, a software and data engineering provider for blue chip and government clients, is taking 11,000 sq ft of recently refurbished space at the 75,338 sq ft development in Millshaw. Eamon Fox, partner and head of development at the Leeds office of Knight Frank, who advised landlords Shelborn, said: “This is one of the most important and prestigious office deals in the south Leeds area this year. Bluesmith is a highly successful software and data engineering provider, and this move marks an important foundation for future sustainable growth. The comprehensive refurbishment of South Central, formerly offices for Barclays Bank, now provides 10 South Paradewww.blmforum.net Business Link 13 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY some of the finest office space in Leeds. The Bluesmith deal is a resounding endorsement of what South Central has to offer. There’s no doubt South Central ticked all the boxes. The combination of its excellent location and first-class facilities, including ample car parking, communal spaces, lounge and a gym, was exactly what Bluesmith wanted as the company continues to grow.” Meanwhile, in Wakefield, an energy consultancy has let an office suite for its headquarters. Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) has completed the letting of the refurbished 5,160 sq ft office suite at 3 Paragon to Compliance 365. Acting on behalf of Nationwide, who retain offices on other floors within the building, LSH secured the lease on a five-year term. Matt Procter, senior surveyor at Lambert Smith Hampton, said: “This letting not only underscores the high quality of its refurbished office space, but also reflects the growing confidence in the Wakefield market. With its modern amenities and prime location, 3 Paragon is well suited to meet the needs of forward-thinking businesses like Compliance 365.” As new deals are sealed, in Sheffield novel workspace is on the way as Legal & General has formally handed over No.1 West Bar Square to the City Council, the first of a collection of modern, sustainable office spaces within the comprehensive £300m regeneration of West Bar. When complete, the scheme will deliver office buildings totalling 500,000 sq ft of workspace that will support up to 6,000 jobs in a strategic location next to Sheffield city centre and the Kelham Island neighbourhood. No.1 West Bar Square offers eight storeys of columnless office floorplates up to 14,000 sq ft behind a contemporary, curved, curtain glass façade. Andrew Kail, CEO Legal & General Institutional Retirement, said: “This marks a key milestone in the transformation of Sheffield West Bar, where we aim to create a vibrant new community for people to live, work, and play. Bringing this previously derelict space back to life is an example of how we are using pension capital to drive positive change across the UK, investing in valuable infrastructure and urban regeneration.” Phase two plans for West Bar will start soon, and feature a second Legal & General-funded, 100,000 sq ft office building, and a 450-space multi-storey car park. Further phases will ultimately provide a million sq ft of mixed-use accommodation, of which over 500,000 sq ft will be Grade A office space. These are just a few key deals and developments in the office market that have taken place of late, with many more abound. South Central14 Business Link www.blmforum.net MANUFACTURING SPOTLIGHT © stock.adobe.com/Hamik Clearing the line www.blmforum.net Business Link 15 MANUFACTURING SPOTLIGHT When it comes to productivity and efficiency in the manufacturing line, one aspect that many people fail to consider is that of line clearance and efficiency. Simply put, line clearance is the time it takes to empty a line of completed products and get it working again. This is less about a robot moving product off the line, and more about quality control, safety checks and the like. It can also refer to when a product line shifts over from one product to another. For instance, many factories nowadays work on multiple products – a good example being FMCG with different recipes for different foods, etc. The transition period between clearing the line of one product and then altering the recipe, changing batches, making sure it’s all set to make the new product, is a period of down-time that can cost a company millions over the course of a year. The reason this is so problematic is that much of line clearance is still done by human hands. Automation has quite often focused on making products be manufactured quicker, and packaging them quicker, but then falling behind when it comes to quality control. Part of this is because making a robot that screws a cap on a bottle of pop is easier than making one that accurately scans it for any imperfections and particles, but 16 Á Line clearance is an overlooked part of processing, and one area in which vast efficiencies can be made. 16 Business Link www.blmforum.net MANUFACTURING SPOTLIGHT © stock.adobe.com/JackF North Lincs Engineering Ltd We specialise in the Supply, Installation and Reconditioning of Industrial and Marine Diesel Engines and Generating Sets. Our team of Service Engineers can Repair, Maintain or Commission Land based or Marine Installations Worldwide. Tel: 01507 328787 • Email: mark@northlincseng.co.uk • Website: www.northlincseng.co.uk it’s also a case of this part of a line being overlooked. It’s not uncommon to still see workers looking over hundreds or thousands of products on a line, turning them over one by one to make sure no packaging is ripped and no foreign material has found their way inside. This is a slow process by any means, and also a risky one as humans are prone to losing focus when repeating the same task over and over, and human error remains one of the big problems leading to product recalls. As line clearance is an oft-overlooked part of manufacturing, it also becomes one in which great savings can be made – and these go beyond simply making a line quicker. If clearance and set-up of a new product line is enhanced, then a factory can take on a wider product portfolio, pumping out extra batches or even an extra product entirely. This allows companies to make their existing assets work harder for them and save on investment in new factories – which can be expensive both in financial terms and also in time. A proper factory can take up to five years to be completed, and then will require new staff and training. Being able to enhance existing lines to take on more products saves on all of this. In terms of making line clearance and new line set-up as efficient as possible it’s best to fully embrace Industry 4.0 and digitalisation. If quality control and assurance is taken care of by vision inspection machines, then these can flood a line and be used at every stage to flag and highlight defective product, which can then be quickly and easily removed by employees. This is easier if products are serialised, because the machine and database can then reference the defective serial number www.blmforum.net Business Link 17 MANUFACTURING SPOTLIGHT with a quick scan and highlight where it is kept, saving further time. In addition, this can then be backtracked if there is any foreign material in a food product for instance, to identify if that happened in the factory or if it was a problem when the raw material came in. It can even identify every potentially contaminated product in the batch served by that material, and flag them for removal. The amount of time this can save is staggering, and it can also be applied to line set-up when a factory line needs to work on a new product. Traditionally, everything needs to be changed by hand when lines are switching, which is a time- consuming exercise, but a smart factory system can use pre-programmed templates for different products, and alter checkweighers, conveyors and packaging machines to suit the new product. This not only makes change over quicker and easier, but also removes another potential point for human error, as a single missed decimal place on a food ingredient, or a forgotten spool of packaging changed on a child’s toy, could lead to an entire batch of flawed product that needs to be scrapped. Industry 4.0 and digitalisation is by no means new, but it is being adopted far too slowly in our region – and in our country. The technology has been a staple in China for the longest time, which is why Chinese products are being produced cheaper and more efficiently than things here in the EU. With countries – especially ours – wanting to become more independent however, there will be renewed focus on protecting the UK’s manufacturing sector, and it will be up to ours to adopt and adapt these new technologies or be left behind. © stock.adobe.com/Martin Barraud/KOTO18 Business Link www.blmforum.net EDUCATION AND TRAINING Training the internal team www.blmforum.net Business Link 19 EDUCATION AND TRAINING Training is an exceptionally valuable resource to a business. In a recent survey, 56% of UK workers stated that they would leave their current role if their workplace stopped providing training. 31% of those surveyed had in fact left a position after experiencing this. In house training generally means that one employee is used to run a training course for other employees of the same business. This usually involves the use of the company’s own expertise, resources, and unique perspective. This can be at their workplace, or at an external venue. This provides many benefits to both employers and employees. However, in house training can be difficult for businesses to justify, given the time away from other duties required to develop and run these programmes. So, what are the key positives derived from taking the in-house training plunge? Contrary to popular belief, in house training can be cost effective. If multiple employees need training, it allows all employees to attend at once, rather than training them individually. This also Hiring is difficult right now, which is why internal training up of existing employees is the go-to option for businesses, especially in the worsening economic climate. 20 Á © stock.adobe.com/Andrey Popov © stock.adobe.com/fizkesNext >