South Yorkshire-based MTL Advanced will supply armoured steel for the UK MoD's Boxer Armoured Vehicle Programme, under a multi-million pound, multi-year contract awarded jointly by WFEL and parent company KMW.  The armoured material will be used in the Boxer vehicle hull assembly, which will be fabricated at WFEL’s specialist Manufacturing Centre of Excellence in Stockport.

MTL Advanced have invested in excess of £2 million in new capital equipment to help support the project and meet increased demand.  he new investments have been spread around the various manufacturing cells of its Rotherham business, to provide an enhancement in capacity, in line with the production schedules for the UK Boxer vehicles contract.

The contract award will create 30 new jobs at MTL Advanced, who also welcomed 12 new apprentices to its Engineering & Welding Apprentice Academy during September 2021. MTL Advanced says that investing in the next generation of talented engineers is critical to its ongoing success. 

The company has also recruited an additional four job seekers as part of a nationwide KickStart campaign and new graduate schemes have also been brought forward to upskill MTL's staff and provide them with further education and career progression opportunities.

MTL Advanced general manager, Karl Stewart, said: “We are really excited to have been awarded this major contract, which will give us the opportunity to work in partnership with WFEL and KMW on such an important UK defence project.  We look forward to engaging closely with WFEL and KMW’s engineering teams and leveraging our armour manufacturing expertise to help make this Boxer Vehicle programme a great success for the British Army.”  

MTL Advanced is located at the heart of the Sheffield-Rotherham Advanced Manufacturing corridor, a region that was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, said Stewart. 

This is the latest sub-contract to be awarded by WFEL, a key partner in the manufacture of the Boxer Armoured Vehicles for the British Army, under a $2.3 billion contract signed in November 2019 between the ARTEC consortium, which manufactures the Boxer, and the UK MoD.