COOLING systems manufacturer Airedale International has continued its export growth programme by opening a new storage and testing facility in Saudi Arabia.

The move has been made in conjunction with Airedale’s local business partner, Saudi Temco.

Their new plant will allow extensive stocks of various Airedale air conditioning systems, including its award-winning chilled water units, to be stored and distributed for use in data centres in the region.

Airedale, which is set to return to a newly built factory in Rawdon later this year following a devastating blaze at its previous premises, will provide Saudi Temco with testing capabilities, which it says will substantially reduce delivery lead times of fully tested, fully configured air conditioning units for data centres.

Mark Viner, commercial director, said: “Their new facility represents another significant step forward in our growth plans, bringing fully configured systems closer to the market and providing customers with high performance precision products on much shorter lead times.”

The latest move follows the opening of AIC’s branch office in the Dubai Airport Freezone in February 2014 which has seen the company consolidate its position in the Middle East serving a large number of high profile projects in the region, including the Dubai International Airport expansion and Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District project, along with early stage design work on other significant pipeline projects.

Mr Viner said the size and scale of these schemes demonstrated the strong demand for British manufactured goods in the Middle East and would see Airedale significantly expand its market share in the region over the next three years.

Airedale has also rolled out an extensive training programme for kits Middle East partners.

Mr Viner said: “We are committed to sharing knowledge and best practice in product selection and cooling system design in order to ensure customers get the best out of their applications in terms of energy efficiency and resilience.”

The new Saudi facility will form the blueprint for Airedale’s expansion plans throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in the next three to five years.

Airedale’s Middle East expansion comes as the latest EY ITEM Club economic report said the strengthening recovery in the Eurozone region, which is the UK’s biggest export market, should offset a hit to overseas trade from the strength of the pound The report expects the eurozone recovery to boost trade - with exports to rise by 5.9 per cent this year and 4.9 per cent in 2016.