Tweddle Engineering is expanding thanks to strong demand for its timber treatment plants.

The firm at Kirkbride Airfield, near Wigton, has invested £1m to boost capacity and is creating up to seven jobs, from office and administration posts to shopfloor roles such as fabricators and welders.

Tweddle’s products include material-handling conveyors, specialist trailers, pressure vessels and structural steelwork.

But it is the demand for its high-pressure timber treatment equipment that is driving the expansion.

Customers include the Swiss company Lonza (Arch Timber), Osmose UK and BSW Timber, which operates the sawmill at Cargo near Carlisle.

Managing director Derek Tweddle said: “The market is growing, as is our market share, although the pound/euro exchange rate isn’t helping.

“We’ve got a large contract in the UK for the supply of timber plants and we’re exporting to Denmark currently.

“We’re at full capacity. We’ve got work well into next year and tenders for large projects into 2017.”

Tweddle has just moved its sister business, Cumbria Profiling, to new premises next door to free up floorspace to boost production.

The company further strengthened its position in timber treatment by winning the timber innovation award (innovative product development category) at the Timber Trade Journal Awards in London this autumn.

The product that clinched the prize was its Excalibur R incising machine, developed in partnership with Arch Timber Protection. This will incise machined round, bowed, irregular, tapered and peeled fence posts of any diameter, from 63mm to 200mm, in a single pass.

Mr Tweddle said: “It makes a small incision in the post that allows more of the chemical treatment to be absorbed so prolonging the life of the timber.

“Arch Timber Protection asked us to design the machine for them.

“There’s nothing like it on the market that can handle uneven posts. We’ve sold 10 in as many months.”

Tweddle Engineering currently employs 30 people, and Cumbria Profiling another seven.