Case Studies

Ferrabyrne is a specialist moulding company predominantly producing bonded rubber to metal technology & suspension systems for the rail industry & commercial vehicles. The Littlehampton-based business manufactures as much as possible in-house, including the design and production of mould tools. Recent growth in demand from its rail ...

Hilton, Derbyshire-based JR Fabrications specialises in the design, development and manufacture of bespoke, high quality, stainless steel exhaust systems for classic and modern cars that are used for race and road applications. The nature of their work means that many are one-off projects many of which are fitted to high value historic cars, ...

Anyone who has watched an episode of the BBC’s Inside the Factory programme will appreciate the speed at which packaging machinery operates. Ensuring the performance and accuracy of these machines, particularly bottling plants, is a speciality of Belgium-based Macovak, which manufactures precision parts used to manoeuvre and position bottles ...

When pneumatics expert John (Jack) Bushby formed Sheffield-based Air Accessories in 1967 it was as a wholesaler of proprietary products from the world’s leading manufacturers, something that continues to this day. From those early days, customer service was at the heart of everything the company did, and this vision remains under current owner

Achieving a balanced machining portfolio that matches the present and predicted workflow is the current investment policy of A Fawcett Precision Engineers. This policy at the Elland, West Yorkshire company gained fresh impetus when Joanne Thompson took over the running of the business from her father who retired in 2009. Joanne, who had worked

When Mounts and More originally started in 1996 it was intended to be a part-time enterprise, but the business quickly morphed from being a small distributor of products for wheelchair users into a service and support centre for not only individual users, but also hospital groups across the UK and Europe. From this experience of being what ...

Initially founded to provide a service and rebuild facility for hot foil presses, which use heat to transfer adhesive-backed foil to imprint and personalise a wide range of goods from luxury handbags to bespoke stationery. However, it soon became clear to Karl and Ros French, founders of Metallic Elephant, that there was a strong market for ...

For over 40 years Strutt Engineering, a family-owned business in the heart of the Peak District, has carved out a niche for itself in the manufacture of hydraulic grabs used in the handling of scrap, quarrying, waste recycling and excavation sectors. Its business is built around a standard product range and also the flexibility to ...

After 15 years of working in the subcontract machining environment Michael Thompson decided that it was time for a change. He was aware that he had the necessary skills and experience to work for himself and after some research the seeds for a new business were sown. Speaking with his now fellow directors Martin Stokoe and Stephen Hornby they ...

When Peterborough-based Rivercircle invested in one of the first XYZ UMC-5X gantry-style simultaneous five-axis machining centres just over 12 months ago its ambition was to gain efficiency by transferring work being done on three and four axis machines. Such was its success in doing that, it has won numerous new contracts for five axis-type ...

Alken Engineering is a long-term user of XYZ Machine Tools’ ProtoTRAK mills, being an ‘early adopter, when the ProtoTRAK control was introduced to the UK in 1993. It now has 10 XYZ ProtoTRAK mills and three XYZ ProTURN lathes on its capacity list, but for many years resisted purchasing any XYZ ‘full CNC’ machines… until now. Alken ...

Familiar to many for its range of Magnetic chucks and lifting equipment Eclipse Magnetics, part of the Spear & Jackson Group of companies, now encompasses a much wider product portfolio; with magnetic filtration and separation systems accounting for around 50 per cent of its turnover. These filtration and separation systems are used across