A FREE top-of-the-range car is on offer to companies moving in and creating jobs at Lydbrook's former Wire Works factory in a bid to turn the Stowfield works into a top business park.
A brand new Range Rover Sport, Fiat 500 Abarth and Audi A5 Coupe 3.0TDI are among other incentives for companies that lease properties and, in turn, help to provide local people
with jobs. Alternatively there's £10,000 worth of holiday vouchers up for grabs.
Mr Jerome Vaughan, director of the company which owns Stowfield, said: "Our aim is to attract companies into this area who will, in turn, help with the regeneration process following the harsh recession being endured in the Forest of Dean.
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"Stowfield Business Park is one of those business secrets which are often tucked away waiting to be discovered.
"This is an ambitious regeneration project which we are undertaking and, we would ideally like to speak with potential owner-occupiers."
H.W. Smith and Co established the Electric Wire and Cable Co. at the Trafalgar Works in the Forest in 1910 and moved into the Lydbrook premises by the River Wye and adjacent to the then Steam Railway Junction in 1912, where it was known as the Lydbrook Cable Works.
The First World War provided a number of contracts with employee numbers expanding from 40 to 650 with double shifts being worked.
During the first World War the works employed some 650 people, producing cable for the field telephones, making some 15,000 miles.
The end of the war brought a slump in business, and in 1920 Smith's connection with the factory ended.
The factory was then acquired by the Edison Swan Electric Co. in the mid 1920s, then employing some 1,200 people producing power line cables. In the Second World War it possessed one of only four machines for making lead alloy tube needed for PLUTO (Petroleum Lines Under The Ocean), which allowed fuel to be supplied to the Allied invasion force in Europe from Britain.
In the late 1940s, Edison Swan was swallowed up by the Associated Electrical Company. Integrated with the Siemens Cable Works at Woolwich, the Stowfield Factory at its height employed around 1,200 people. The Cable Works came to an end in 1966 with the loss of 650 jobs when the factory was bought by Reed Paper Group, which in its turn was taken over by a Swedish Company SCA.
Mr vaughan added: "We look forward to hearing from new or existing companies about Stowfield Business Park and handing over the keys to that Range Rover Sport."
He said the business park will become one of the largest in the Forest of Dean, totalling over 325,000 square feet in eight buildings.
"With rents starting at just 75 pence per square foot, it represents one of the best value industrial sites in the region, if not in the UK."
Stowfield is available to let through Parrys Commercial and further details are available on (01633) 508508 or e-mail [email protected]">[email protected]