Ross Companies, an industrial filtration manufacturer based near Ballymena, is investing £3.6 million to expand at recently acquired and refurbished premises near Ahoghill, with Invest NI backing the project with £125,000 of support. The investment is expected to create 25 new engineering, manufacturing and management roles, taking the workforce from 29 to 54 people over three years, and the company expects turnover to pass £5 million within two years, up from £345,000 in 2019.
Invest NI's announcement never raises the question buried inside that £3.6 million: a refurbished building and the equipment fitted inside it are not taxed the same way, and the gap between them is not small. One gets full tax relief in the year it is bought. The other gets 3% a year for the next three decades. Get the split wrong on the tax return and a growing manufacturer either overpays for years that didn't need to be paid, or overclaims and waits for HMRC to catch it.
What Invest NI announced
Founded in 2017, Ross Companies designs, manufactures, installs, finishes and maintains industrial filtration products and engineered solutions for the quarrying, aggregates, cement, concrete, food and drink, animal feed, waste, recycling and energy sectors, among others, from its base near Ballymena. The company has previously used Invest NI's Ambition to Grow and Grow Beyond programmes, and this £3.6 million project extends that relationship: Invest NI's £125,000 contribution supports expanding at the recently acquired and refurbished Ahoghill premises, increasing manufacturing capacity, bringing more production processes in-house and developing the company's filtration product range. Managing Director William Ross said the investment "reflects the confidence we have in the future growth of our business" and is "creating high-quality jobs in the local area." Invest NI's announcement puts current turnover at around £3.78 million, up from £345,000 in 2019, with growth beyond £5 million expected within two years as the 25 new roles take the workforce from 29 to 54 people over three years.
Why £3.6 million of investment is not one number for tax purposes
A manufacturer spending £3.6 million on expansion is usually spending it on at least two different things, and HMRC taxes each on a completely different timeline. New processing and filtration equipment is plant and machinery expenditure, which qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance: 100% relief against profits in the year it is bought, up to a £1 million annual cap. Acquiring and refurbishing a building falls under a separate relief, the Structures and Buildings Allowance, which gives a flat 3% a year, spread over 33 and one-third years, with no upfront relief at all regardless of the size of the bill. The two reliefs sit in different parts of the tax return, and a business that books a combined refurbishment-and-fit-out project as one lump of capital expenditure, rather than splitting it at the point of claim, risks claiming the wrong rate on part of the spend either way.
Worked example: splitting a refurbishment-and-fit-out year
Few Northern Ireland manufacturers are investing at Ross Companies' £3.6 million scale in one go, so it is worth putting the same split against a smaller case, entirely illustrative and not connected to any real business. Say a County Antrim filtration or processing manufacturer buys and refurbishes an existing industrial unit for £900,000 in a year, and fits it out with £700,000 of new processing and handling equipment in the same accounting period.
| £1.6m refurbishment-and-fit-out year, by category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Building refurbishment (Structures and Buildings Allowance, 3%) | £900,000 |
| Year one relief on the building (3% of £900,000) | £27,000 |
| New equipment (Annual Investment Allowance, 100%, within £1m cap) | £700,000 |
| Year one relief on the equipment | £700,000 |
| Total relief claimed in year one, against £1.6m spent | £727,000 |
Less than half the £1.6 million is relieved in year one, and that is the correct outcome, not a mistake to fix. The £700,000 of equipment is fully relieved immediately because it sits comfortably inside the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance cap. The £900,000 building balance keeps being written down at £27,000 a year for roughly another 32 years, regardless of how the business performs or whether the building is later sold, because the Structures and Buildings Allowance has no concept of an accelerated claim. A business that instead claimed the whole £1.6 million at the equipment rate would be significantly overclaiming; one that claimed the whole amount at the building rate would be giving up £673,000 of relief it was actually entitled to this year.
The part most refurbishment invoices miss
HMRC's own guidance on the Structures and Buildings Allowance excludes one category from the 3% rate entirely: costs that also qualify for plant and machinery allowances, including integral features and fixtures. A refurbishment invoice rarely separates these out on its own. The wiring and controls installed for specific processing equipment, ventilation and extraction systems fitted for a production process, and fixed sanitary or water installations can all sit inside what looks like one "building works" figure, and each of them potentially qualifies for the 100% Annual Investment Allowance rather than the 3% building rate, provided it is identified and claimed separately before the return is filed. Reviewing a refurbishment invoice line by line, rather than booking it as a single figure, is usually where the extra relief is found, and it is the single most common adjustment accountants make when they look at a manufacturer's refurbishment bill properly.
What it means for a Northern Ireland manufacturer specifically
Invest NI's own £125,000 contribution adds a second layer. A capital contribution from a public body such as Invest NI is deducted from the qualifying cost before capital allowances are calculated, on whichever pool the grant was given towards, so relief is only available on the net figure, not the gross spend — the same rule behind every Invest NI grant we have covered on this feed, worked through in detail against a smaller award in our piece on Shaype's £2.4 million Belfast project. Invest NI's announcement does not say whether the £125,000 supports the refurbished premises, the new equipment, or both, so it is not possible to say exactly how much that reduces Ross Companies' own claim — only that it does, pound for pound, on whichever side it lands.
For a Northern Ireland business with a smaller agri-food, construction or manufacturing footprint than Ross Companies, the lesson scales down directly: an equipment-heavy capital spend inside the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance cap gets full relief this year; a building-heavy spend gets 3% a year for a generation, unless a proper apportionment pulls the integral features out of it first.
What to do this week
If you have bought or refurbished a building this year, get the invoice split before the return goes in — our tax planning team separates integral features and fixtures from the structure itself so each part claims at the rate it is actually entitled to, rather than treating one invoice as one allowance. Check the rules yourself via gov.uk's guidance on claiming capital allowances for structures and buildings and the Annual Investment Allowance pages, since the exclusions list is where most of the value sits. If you are scaling headcount the way Ross Companies is, bring the growth plan to payroll before the first of the new roles starts, so PAYE, pension auto-enrolment and Real Time Information reporting are set up for the size the business is growing into, not the size it was.
For how the same £1 million Annual Investment Allowance cap plays out on a much larger project, see our piece on Foyle Food Group's £15 million Omagh investment.
What is still uncertain
Invest NI's announcement gives the total investment, the grant, the new jobs and the three-year workforce timeline, but it does not break down how the £3.6 million splits between the Ahoghill premises and new equipment, when the refurbishment itself completes, or when each of the 25 roles is expected to be filled across the three years. None of that detail is normally published for a grant of this size, and Ross Companies' own capital allowances claim will depend on exactly that split once its accounts are drawn up.
