Futuristic Specsavers manufacturing facility in Kidderminster shines in National Apprenticeship Week as skills minister admits popular management apprenticeships to be axed
A visit from the skills minister shone a spotlight on Specsavers’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Kidderminster as the company celebrated its apprentices - some of whom are revolutionising operations.
Baroness Jacqui Smith, Minister for Skills, was given a guided tour of the high-tech operation in Stourport Road - Kidderminster’s biggest employer with just under 1,000 workers - as part of National Apprenticeship Week.
However, the minister also confirmed some popular management apprenticeships may be off the table for employers going forwards unless they stump up extra cash.
Baroness Smith, who was Home Secretary from 2007 to 2009 and Redditch MP for 13 years until 2010, spoke to the Express & Star following a visit to Home to Lens Online, Vision Labs and International Glazing Services (IGS) near Stourport.
The site, one of Specsavers’s biggest manufacturing and distribution facilities, handles lens manufacturing, assembly and distribution for more than 900 Specsavers practices across the UK - with IGS producing more than 80,000 pairs of glasses every week and Lens Online dispatching 44,000 orders every day.
Rather like an Amazon fulfilment centre, robots are leading the way inside the giant facility.
Apprentice Klaudia Filpowicz, a warehouse operative, was part of the team that inspired and developed the innovative automated packing operation. She said: “We brought the robots to consolidate the dispatch from three different sites: IGS, Lens Online and Vision Labs.
“It was really exciting to be part of this and I’m really happy to be doing an apprenticeship.”
