Time has a funny way of slipping past you when you're busy. It only really catches up with you when someone points out a date on a calendar — and then, all of a sudden, three years have gone by since we packed up our old unit in Halifax and moved into our current site in Cragg Vale.
At the time, it felt like a big step. We were leaving behind a building that had served us well but had, frankly, run out of room to grow. The new site offered more space, better logistics, and — perhaps most importantly — room to imagine what Zikodrive could become if we weren't constantly working around the constraints of our old four walls. Looking back now, it's clear that move wasn't just a change of address. It was the starting point for a period of growth that has reshaped almost every part of the business.
Moving out of the old unit in Halifax in 2023...
More Space, More Capability
One of the first big changes after settling into Cragg Vale was the addition of a second production line. For a high-mix, low-volume manufacturer like us, that's not a small decision — every new line means more flexibility in how we schedule jobs, more resilience when one line needs maintenance or is mid-changeover, and crucially, more capacity to take on customers we simply couldn't have served before. What started as a single line doing its best to keep up with demand is now two lines working in parallel, and the difference in throughput and scheduling headroom has been transformative.
Alongside the second line came a dedicated design office — a space that sounds like a small thing on paper but has had an outsized impact on how we work. Before, design engineering was squeezed in wherever there was a spare desk, often competing for attention with the noise and pace of the shop floor. Now our design team has a proper home: a quieter, focused environment suited to the kind of detailed embedded firmware and hardware design work that motor controllers demand. It's made a noticeable difference to both the quality of the work and the wellbeing of the people doing it.
Starting to move into new unit in Cragg Vale in 2023
Investing in the Right Equipment
Growth isn't just about square footage, though — it's about capability. Over the past three years we've made some significant investments in equipment that has genuinely changed what we're able to offer customers. Conformal coating machines now allow us to protect boards destined for harsh environments — vibration, moisture, dust, temperature swings — without relying on manual application, which means more consistent, higher-quality protection at scale. Potting machines have opened up another layer of environmental protection for our controllers, letting us serve applications where boards need to be fully encapsulated against the elements.
These aren't glamorous additions. Nobody visiting the site for the first time is going to be dazzled by a potting machine the way they might by a slick new product launch. But for a manufacturer working in high-mix, low-volume production — where every customer's requirements can look a little different — this kind of equipment is exactly what allows us to say "yes" to a wider range of specifications without compromising on reliability. It's the unglamorous, unseen backbone of being able to build motor controllers that genuinely hold up in the field.
The People Behind It All
Of course, machines and floor space only get you so far. The real story of the last three years is the people. Since the move, we've roughly tripled our workforce — a statistic that's easy to write in a sentence but represents a huge amount of change day to day. New faces on the shop floor, new engineers in the design office, new voices in meetings that used to involve a handful of people and now involve considerably more.
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Senior Production Engineer Marius Sumutiu setting up a pick and place machine at the new site in 2023
Growing a team that quickly brings its own challenges. Culture doesn't maintain itself automatically when headcount triples; it has to be actively looked after. But what's been genuinely rewarding is seeing how many of the people who joined us in those early days at Cragg Vale have grown into more senior roles as the company has expanded — taking on responsibilities, mentoring newer starters, and generally treating the growth of the business as something they've helped shape rather than just something happening around them.
Why This Matters
It would be easy to treat an anniversary like this as just a nice round number — three years, tidy enough to mark, not quite significant enough to make a fuss about. But stepping back, it's a useful moment to take stock of how much has actually changed. A second production line. A dedicated design office. New coating and potting capability. A workforce three times the size it was when we first turned the key in the door at Cragg Vale.
None of that happened by accident, and none of it happened overnight. It's the result of a lot of decisions, a lot of hard work from a growing team, and — if we're honest — a fair bit of risk-taking along the way. Investing in new equipment and new space before you're entirely sure the demand will be there to match is never entirely comfortable. But three years on, it's clear those bets paid off.
So here's to the last three years at Cragg Vale — to the people who've been here since day one and the many more who've joined along the way, to the machines quietly doing their jobs in the background, and to whatever the next three years bring. If the last three are anything to go by, we'd guess it won't be dull.