An engineering firm which employs hundreds of staff in Cheltenham is predicting it will increase sales this year by 11 per cent.

Spa town-headquartered Spirax Sarco has released a trading update which forecasts growth in its global industrial production will be 3.5 per cent for its last four months.

That would be marginally below the 3.6 per cent forecast at the time of its interim report.

However, the business - experts in steam engineering for industry across the globe and employers of 1,100 county staff - said things could be significantly better when it comes to its end of year figures.

"The integration of Gestra and Chromalox, which joined the group last year, continues progressing well.

"Their overall performance remains in line with our expectations and consistent with their performance in the first half of the year, said the update from the company.

"The effect of these acquisitions is anticipated to increase the group's full‐year sales by approximately 11 per cent."

"The global macro‐economic environment for the group remains positive with the latest forecast for global industrial production (IP) growth for 2018 being 3.5 per cent, marginally below the 3.6 per cent forecast at the time of our interim report.

"As in the first half of the year, IP growth is weighted towards the emerging economies where the increase is forecast to be 4.9 per cent, compared with 2.4 per cent in the developed economies, much of the differential coming from China."

"Industrial production growth rates are forecast to remain positive for the remainder of the year in both developed and emerging markets although predictions for 2019 are less clear, with forecasters indicating a slightly lower level of IP growth in 2019 than in 2018.

"We continue with our investment programmes in support of future growth and the implementation of our strategy to generate growth from our own actions to outperform our markets.

"We achieve this by being more effective in identifying and generating engineered solutions to help our customers with energy efficiency, sustainability, productivity, quality, cost reduction and compliance with ever increasing regulatory requirements."