Recruitment is under way for 200 employees to staff a sustainable home-building operation in factory buildings which were once among the biggest employers in the southeast.
Nua Manufacturing bought the former Braun factory in Carlow town two years ago and have invested €50 million into the site to turn it into a production facility to make timber frames and light gauge steel frames.
Manufacturing is due to start in the next two weeks and will involve the manufacture of a pre-made home in as little as 90 minutes - or 45 minutes on average when combined with the company's other operations in Arklow and Dundalk.
Nua is owned by Glenveagh Properties, one of the biggest home-builders in the country, and the pre-made homes will be sent to the construction firm's sites.
At the moment they are private developments but plans are in place for two public-private partnerships in the Dublin area and, according to Nua, more could follow which would bring its homes into the social and public housing sphere.
"Nua Manufacturing prides itself on innovation, using industry-leading technology to produce high-quality timber frames and light gauge steel frames, which are used in homebuilding," company director Tony McLoughlin said today.
The process includes a type of 3D printing to produce steel parts for the houses, using computer-generated 3D design models, as well as pre-programmed sawing technology to cut timber into the required shapes and sizes.
The Braun factory where Nua has made its Carlow home was opened in 1975 and manufactured a range of electrical goods including razor parts, hairdryers, hair-curlers, and even lighters, before production slowed as the decades progressed and it finally closed its doors for good in 2010.
Today a recruitment fair was held to fill 200 posts which must be filled before production can get under way in earnest at the property.
It has since been largely vacant, apart from hosting a socially-distanced Carlow Arts Festival in 2021, but there is delight in the Carlow area to see it being occupied by manufacturing business again.
"This site is hugely symbolic for the people of Carlow and there is already tremendous excitement about the opportunities that NUA Manufacturing will bring," Cllr Andrea Dalton, the Fianna Fáil Cathaoirleach of Carlow County Council said today.
She herself worked on a placement in Braun back in the 1990s when she was a student in Carlow RTC (now SETU). "We always knew Braun from the outside, so it was great to get an insight into how a huge factory operated.
"Braun is a big part of my life as a child, my father worked here so many a day we came in here to collect Daddy from work. Particularly we were delighted if he done overtime because he used to get a few extra vouchers for lunch and he used to always buy us a pack of Silvermints.
"But I'd say you'd have to search far and wide before you'd find someone in Carlow who didn't have a connection with Braun."
Her father, Jim Dalton, worked in the factory for 23 years from 1979, when "haircare was the main thing" that the assembly lines covered. "I worked everywhere in it, we were in maintenance so there wasn't a bit of it we didn't cover, from the roof to the floor.
"It was great, a great place. A good crowd always in it, good crack, you'd never see a dull moment."
The day it closed in 2010 was a sad one, he said, but: "It's great to see something starting up in it again, let's hope it keeps going as long as Braun did."
