£11m order is placed for 300 JCB machines

The new year booster will see the machines being made at JCB's factories in Cheadle and Rocester, but all the cab units will be manufactured at the company's plant in Rugeley.

The work at Rugeley is core to JCB's recently announced £150 million expansion plans and is to be transfered to a 350,000 sq ft factory to be built in Beamhurst over the next four years. The 400-strong workforce at Rugeley will all be moved to the new site once it is completed.

The latest good news for JCB comes from plant hire company Boels Rental, which is investing in its third major order of JCB equipment in three years.

The latest 300 machines, to be delivered by the end of March, will see Boels running a fleet of more than 1,000 JCB excavators, telescopic handlers and rough-terrain forklift trucks.

JCB chief executive Graeme Macdonald said: "We are delighted to have secured such a significant order from one of Europe's most important rental companies.

"This is the third year in succession that JCB has won this major business from Boels, which speaks volumes for the superior quality, performance and efficiency of JCB's machines."

Pierre Boels, chief executive of Boels, said: "Performance and efficiency were key factors in our decision to purchase the JCB machines. The fuel savings offered by the Ecomax-powered products are particularly important, as being environmentally responsible is essential to our business."

All the machines are also being supplied with JCB's LiveLink telematics system which monitors when the equipment needs servicing and protects them from theft.

The Boels business, based in the Maastricht region, has more than 300 outlets and operates from more than 1,800 rental locations across Europe.

Last month JCB announced plans to invest £150 million to expand its operations in the county and create 2,500 jobs by 2018.

JCB said it had outgrown the Riverside site and had tried unsuccessfully to find a suitable replacement plot in the Rugeley area.

It plans to keep the whole workforce and will lay on transport for the Rugeley workers to get to the new site, which is 15 miles away, next to its existing heavy goods plant.

JCB chairman Lord Bamford said the five-year investment plans for Staffordshire are part of a wider global growth strategy to expand sales and increase market share.

The £150m plans – the single largest investment in JCB history – will in turn add a further 7,500 jobs in the UK supply chain.

They also include expansion of JCB's production operations at its world headquarters in Rocester with an additional 126,000 sq ft of manufacturing space to increase hydraulic cylinder production.

And there are proposals for a new purpose-built 220,000 sq ft factory on the Harewood Industrial Estate in Cheadle, Staffordshire, to expand existing JCB Earthmovers and JCB Compact Products operations