Brandauer acquires CB Cable Clips

The company behind the self-adhesive cable clip has been acquired by one of Birmingham’s longest-established manufacturers.

Brandauer, which is a specialist in metal pressings and stampings, has purchased CB Cable Clips in an undisclosed deal that will safeguard three jobs, create two new positions and see all customers, IP, stock and assets transferred over.
Under new ownership, it is expected that the business has the potential to double its £110,000 annual sales over the first 12 months and will complement Brandauer’s own product range, which currently includes turnkey precision tooling, motor laminations and Elopin press-fit connectors. The deal is the first acquisition that Brandauer has ever completed in its 157-year history, and is part of an ambitious growth plan that will see it achieve £10m turnover by the end of 2020.
“We have been manufacturing the CB Cable Clip range under a subcontract agreement for more than 40 years, so are synonymous with the innovation and the production process,” says Rowan Crozier, CEO of Brandauer. “When the possibility of selling was sounded out, it seemed the logical decision to incorporate the business into Brandauer. We knew the quality and customer service expected, we knew the delivery patterns and, most significantly, it was another product we could add to our growing range.
“We are already looking to double the size of the team and believe there is an opportunity to access new markets and customers,” he adds.
Brandauer will manufacture and supply the CB Cable Clip range of self-adhesive aluminium cable clips. Since the invention came to market in 1972, over 566 million clips have been produced and used across the world.
For further information www.brandauer.co.uk

Atkin Automation celebrates 10 years with Shung Dar

Atkin Automation, part of Group Rhodes, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary as the UK and Ireland distributor for Taiwanese company Shung-Dar Industrial Co.

The company started working in partnership with Shung-Dar in 2008, and for the past decade Atkin Automation has been a distributor for Shung-Dar’s growing range of coil stamping and processing equipment for carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminium processing plants. Today, the product portfolio includes automatic slitting lines, cut-to-length lines, combined lines and multi-blanking lines.
Geoff Barker, sales manager at Atkin Automation, says: “The relationship has been a success as our two businesses share the same values. Our mutual goal is to deliver high-quality products and services. We also focus on innovation and the use of technology, and ensure we take care of our skilled workforce.”
To mark the 10th anniversary of the successful distributorship, Shung Dar president Mr Yang, his son Jason and sales manager Shawn Yang (nephew), travelled to Wakefield, where the new Atkin premises is located. Speaking at the company after a presentation on Shung-Dar’s expanding product range, Yang said: “Over the past decade, both of our businesses have grown significantly and we have also developed our range to provide a complete smart press stamping line solution to steel and aluminium producers and stockholders.”
For further information www.grouprhodes.co.uk

Quality awards prompt £150k sales

A company-wide commitment to quality and exacting standards is paying off for Alloy Wire International as it secured a host of new orders following a trio of accreditation awards.

The manufacturer of ‘high performance’ nickel alloys, which is owned by all of its employees at facilities in Brierley Hill and Yorkshire, has secured £150,000 of contracts to supply customers in the aerospace and energy sectors.
Management at the company is putting the recent success down to the fact that Alloy Wire has just been re-approved to the aerospace and defence standard AS9100 rev D and the ISO 14001 environmental standard, not to mention becoming one of the first in the UK to achieve ISO 45001, a new international accreditation that covers all aspects of health and safety.
For further information www.alloywire.com

Record orders for Heller

Heller reports, all things considered, that 2018 was a good year for the group: in the fiscal year, the company generated a sales volume of €558.3m, slightly below the previous year’s level; however, with a volume of nearly €700m, order intake reached a new high.

Orders were booked worth €695.2m, corresponding to a rise of €82.3m or 13.4%. With a total of €546m, the current order volume has also reached a high. The number of employees increased moderately from 2440 in 2017 to 2590 in 2018, while equity ratio increased to just under 35%.
For further information www.heller.biz

Strip-feeding lines with high-performance levellers

In the automotive industry, lightweight construction is in greater demand than ever before.

However, car seats and their fastening elements must withstand the enormous forces exerted on vehicles involved in accidents. High-strength materials are used to ensure high resilience, but with a lower weight.
The machines of numerous automotive suppliers used up to now are often not designed for processing these materials. As a result, automotive supplier Adient has taken appropriate upgrade measures: the press lines at its Solingen works were recently extended with the addition of three strip-feeding lines featuring high-performance levellers from Schnutz GmbH. The new machines enable feeding and easy processing of the special materials with optimum flatness being achieved.
“Prior to awarding the contracts to Schnutz, Adient carried out extensive tests at various suppliers,” says Dr Lutz-Stefan Henrich, managing director of Schnutz GmbH. “The aim was to ascertain whether the machines were suitable for the complex and multi-stage forming of high-strength steel.”
At the technical centre in Siegen, Germany, Schnutz convinced the automotive supplier of the quality of its machines in joint levelling tests. For this reason, Adient decided to extend its machinery for processing high-strength materials with the addition of three strip feeding lines, including a high-performance leveller from Schnutz.
At the pressing plant of Adient, seat rails are manufactured on several lines.
“The high-strength material used requires special treatment in order to obtain the required flatness with optimal residual stress in the strip material,” says Henrich. “Only when the geometry of the leveller matches the particular product can the best results be achieved.”
That reason is why Schnutz uses simulation programs to analyse the working processes and plastic forming behaviour of the materials used in order to modify the machines to suit customer-specific requirements.
For further information www.schnutz.com