Luxury watchmaker Bremont pumps £25m in new London hub
Luxury watch manufacturer Bremont is expected to boost the market in the UK with a watchmaking hub in London.
The £25m investment is expected to bolster the company’s headcount by 20 per cent, reaching 180 employees within two to three years, in a bid to focus its supply chain in the UK.
“For over 60 years, industrial-scale watchmaking had all but disappeared from the UK. Yet the world continued to set its time by Greenwich mean time. We felt that it was now time for change,” Giles English, Bremont’s co-founder, said.
The company, the UK’s largest manufacturer of high-end watches, is set to open a new manufacturing and technology centre in Henley-on-Thames.
The 35,000 square foot hub forms part of the watchmakers plans to invest in new jobs and skills ahead of its apprenticeship scheme launch.
“It is a symbol of our confidence in post-Brexit Britain and the start of our next chapter as a global British high-end watch brand,” English explained.
Watchmakers, technicians, movement assembly engineers and e-Commerce, retail, marketing and support staff are among the new roles available following the investment.
The company will work alongside Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and Williams Racing to strengthen its engineering practices.