HIS Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has opened a £5m factory extension at Naylor Industries in Cawthorne.

The Queen’s cousin visited the family-owned company, which manufactures construction products, on Monday.

The investment will allow the firm to make larger diameter pipes to carry big volumes of surface water, helping protect Britain against flooding from extreme weather.

It has been supported by a £615,000 grant from the Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership.

It creates 20 new jobs on the Cawthorne site, including a number of highly skilled engineering roles, and a team of Naylor employees was sent to Germany for training with the new equipment.

The Duke toured the factory with Edward Naylor and met with staff members and apprentices.

Mr Naylor said: “Queen Victoria was on the throne when my great-grandfather founded Naylor Industries.

“It was an honour to show the Duke of Kent around our facilities.

“Every year we seem to be seeing once-in-a-lifetime weather events.

“As it rains more heavily, we need larger capacity pipelines to deal with storm water. Large diameter pipes are an important part of measures to defend the country against flooding.

“We progressed this development despite the outcome of the Brexit referendum.

“Although this has introduced some uncertainty into our key markets, we hope in due course to get our share of the big infrastructure projects which are in the pipeline such as the high-speed rail, smart motorway and nuclear power projects.”

Every year, the Naylor group manufactures enough pipe to stretch around the world, twice.

The new investment dramatically increases the capacity of the company’s Cawthorne site, which already manufactures up to 50 miles of pipe per day.