Xerotech, the Co Galway-based battery manufacturer and integrator, has announced the creation of 70 jobs over the next six months.
The company said that in response to increased demand for electrification in the non-road mobile machinery market, it is planning for the additional capacity required for its business growth over the coming years.
This includes the acquisition of three new units in the Claregalway Corporate Park.
This will extend the company's current footprint to 50,000 sq ft and it will now have two dedicated units for fully automated serial manufacturing lines and a third to support its planned headcount growth of 70 new staff.
Xerotech is also in final stages of green-field site selection in Galway for its European Gigafactory Complex which will exceed 250,000 sq ft in its first phase.
The new facility is expected to start operations in late 2024 and will increase the company's manufacturing capacity by 20-fold.
Dr Barry Flannery, Xerotech's CEO and Founder, said the company's location in Claregalway has been a fantastic operating base as direct motorway access and being outside of city traffic gives it a huge catchment area for recruitment.
"We are scaling and ramping as fast as possible despite the challenges of quarantines, visa restrictions and general business disruptions," Dr Flannery said.
Dr Flannery said that nobody could have predicted the scale and speed of the electrification shift.
"There is a massive shift underway right now with virtually every single manufacturer in the world building fully electric equipment prototypes and looking for battery systems. There is zero doubt now that electric vehicles, of all types, are going to dominate this decade and, ultimately, this century," he said.
"It's a great time to be in the battery business," he added.
