For five decades, Atlas Leisure Homes has led the way in holiday home design.
With well known holiday home and lodge lines such as Debonair, Heritage, and Festival, Atlas is a brand synonymous with strong interiors and conceptual design, structural integrity and high quality.
Every model is handcrafted from Atlas’ head office and manufacturing facility in Hull, UK, with unrivalled attention to detail.
Celebrating 50 years in the market in April 2023, its longevity in the marketplace can be somewhat attributed to its unique offering, with every leisure home being built to order.
The manufacturer’s products are known for being robust and well made, as well as handmade.
Wood used in its holiday homes and lodges are cut and milled by Atlas, ensuring all of its wooden furnishings are bespoke and handmade, as well as pressing its own doors.
Atlas prides itself on its people, believing that its strength is derived from the talents, ideas, and experiences of its employees.
The business has found that caravan manufacturing faces a labour shortage, with the issue being compounded in the region by a majority of caravan manufacturers being based around the Humber, making the pool of qualified staff more diluted.
In answer to this, Atlas created its own training academy, taking on a small cohort of trainees at a time, placing them on a 13-week inhouse training programme. The programme is designed to skill them in the niche areas the business have a requirement for.
Since starting the programme, Atlas have trained over 40 young people, with a retention rate of 65%.
Atlas’ efforts in upskilling its staff was recognised in February 2023, with the business being nominated for Employer of the Year 2023 by The Apprenticeship Awards.
This nomination reflects Atlas’ commitment to providing opportunities to the young people of Hull and East Yorkshire, giving them a chance to develop core skills in lean manufacturing.
Colin Jeffrey, Operations Director at Atlas shared on the business’ website “It is our training mission to provide the highest quality training and education for young people as a career foundation for future growth. We will combine the technical requirements for modern efficient lean manufacturing with the technical and craft skills needed to manufacture the highest quality luxury caravan holiday homes. We will provide skills and knowledge that will last a lifetime and lead to a successful and rewarding career in manufacturing”.
In March this year, the holiday home and lodge manufacturer announced further investments into its facilities in Hull, thanks to seeing a 60% increase in revenue.
Since adding an additional facility, Atlas have made a £720,000 investment into a new machine shop to support it.
The addition of CNC machinery, a beam saw and edge bander, saw the investment of the second site rise to more than £1 million.
The investment has seen the introduction of a fourth production line and efficiencies have enabled Atlas to remove the need to transport materials between sites. This has resulted in output being more than doubled.
Whilst the past 12-18 months have seen success across the board for Atlas Leisure Homes, the current economic climate and inflation rate rise has had an impact on demand.
Atlas Leisure Homes remain optimistic that, once the economy sees a sustained period of sustainability, they can start making plans for the future, including how its holiday homes and lodges can become more efficient.