Coating plant opened after £5m revamp

Dame Mary Perkins opened Vision Lab's new £5m state-of-the-art lens coating facility in Kidderminster last week.

The lab will increase the company's capacity to support its growing UK business and has been a two-year project that has included extending the site and upgrading the equipment at the partner company.

Two buildings have been joined to increase floor space from 30,000 to 45,000sq ft and two SCL coaters and one Leybold Syrus were added on top of the existing coating machines at an extra cost of around £750k.

The new lab can coat over 50,000 lenses a week, a doubling of capacity, with average lead times falling to 1.3 days. The company added that working practices at the facility had been designed to enhance product quality and speed of order delivery.