MORE than 5,000 people have applied for 400 jobs at the new Quinn radiator factory in Newport, bosses said yesterday.

It is a year since the Irish-based manufacturing giant announced it was going to build Europe's biggest radiator factory in Imperial Park.

The move was hailed as one of the most significant in Gwent since the early 1990s.

A year later £100 million investment was spent extending and refitting the former LG site.

It is part of an estimated total investment of around £180 million - including £5.4 million from Assembly grant money.

That is nearly £50 million more than originally planned as Quinn have expanded the scale of the site's operations.

With a history of white elephants on the LG site, the company is keen to stress they are here to stay.

There are 120 people working at the plant. Four hundred are due to be employed by the start of 2008.

Production has already begun - with panels being made on site and shipped abroad for assembly.

State-of-the-art equipment is arriving daily and the first production line will be complete within two weeks.

General manager, Robert Copley, 45, said: "The amazing thing is the speed at which it is growing."

Production of complete radiators is due to start this autumn.

Quinn has also applied for planning permission to build a 113m by 35m high fully automated warehouse, which will be the only one of its kind in Europe.

When it is running at full capacity, the factory will produce four million radiators a year - one every four seconds.

Mr Copley says that with 800 acres of land, there is no reason the Quinn Group will not want to expand its Newport operations in the near future.

Already the group has expanded the 700,000 sq ft factory to 1.2 million sq ft.

Local contractors are also getting employment from the building works, with an average of 100 local contractors estimated to be working on site every day.

Newport West MP Paul Flynn and AM Rosemary Butler visited the factory yesterday and were impressed with progress.

Mr Flynn said: "Manufacturing was the life blood of Newport and it was disturbing to see it decline so rapidly in recent years.

"To see £100 million invested in less than a year is wonderful."