BOSSES at Kaman Tooling pledged further expansion as the firm officially opened its new £2.5m manufacturing plant.

The company, which has relocated from Darwen’s India Mill to the Innovation Drive Aerospace Supply Park in Burnley, wants to create 50 new jobs by 2015.

Business and political leaders praised the company at the the launch of its purpose-built 34,000 square foot site yesterday.

Kaman Tooling Centre of Excellence, which will house specialist equipment, sits on the former Michelin site next to Aircelle’s UK headquarters in Bancroft Road, Heasandford.

Kaman managing director, Mark Podmore, said the hub would ‘considerably increase’ the firm’s capacity to supply mould and assembly tools to the aerospace industry.

He said: “The site will continue to expand, and will increase to 64,000 square feet in 2015, creating up to 50 new jobs.”

Among machinery at the site is a 20-metre, five-axis CNC milling machine and a six-metre co-ordinate measuring machine used for ‘advanced and complex high-precision digital inspection’.

Kaman Tooling was formed in 2008 when the Kaman Corporation, based in Connecticut, USA, bought Darwen company Brookhouse Holdings Ltd for £43million.

Outgoing Burnley Council leader Julie Cooper, Burnley MP Gordon Birtwistle and Jim Larwood, president of Kaman Aerosystems, were all present at yesterday’s ceremony. The manufacturer came in for praise from Business Secretary Vince Cable when he visited Burnley in February. Dr Cable said: “Kaman’s expansion and is one of the encouraging signs of growth in Burnley.”