Two companies on Hopton Industrial Estate on the outskirts of Devizes are drawing up plans to expand.

Cross Manufacturing and Latchways plan an additional factory and say the expansion plans reflect years of steady growth and optimism for the future.

Cross Manufacturing, which designs and makes sealing rings and seals, bought the former Grist building on the opposite side of the road to its factory and will move part of its aerospace and power generation production into it early next year.

Director David Spencer said: “We are doing this so we have extra space ifor whatever the future might deliver and hopefully we will carry on developing and growing.”

The latest move caps an impressive period of growth for the company, which exports most of its products including to Rolls-Royce, General Electric and Siemens.

Cross Manufacturing moved to Hopton in 1998 after outgrowing its premises in Bath Road where it had been since 1962.

The company has already extended its premises twice.

It employs 350 staff at Hopton, of which 290 are permanent, and has 120 staff at its head office in Bath.

It encountered a blip in 2008/9 when the economic downturn began and it laid off temporary staff but business recovered and since then it has taken on temporary staff.

The company’s biggest growth area is the automotive industry. Its sealing rings for turbo chargers are used in almost all diesel car engines and, with more stringent controls on emissions being introduced, there is an increasing demand to produce better and more efficient seals.

Latchways, which moved to Hopton from Calne 1999, has submitted an application to build a new office and warehouse building next to its existing factory. It makes safety equipment which is installed on bridges, public buildings, electricity pylons and other structures. There are 105 staff at Hopton and the application says Lartchways hopes the workforce will expand to about 120 in the next two years.

Commercial manager Stuart Pearson said: “We do currently lease out buildings on Hopton Park and we also rent storage facilities in Calne so this new building will bring everybody into one location and give us more capacity for the future.”